LOS ANGELES — A federal judge has sentenced law firm co-founder Melvyn Weiss to 30 months in prison for his role in a lucrative lawsuit kickback scheme targeting some of the largest corporations in the nation.
The 72-year-old Weiss also was ordered Monday to pay $9.7 million in forfeitures and $250,000 in fines.
You know, it would be really informative for Congress to have an oversight hearing into the abuses of the plaintiff's bar. Weiss would probably appreciate a trip to Washington to break upon the monotony of prison.
Can we at least all agree that S. 3036, the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill, is all about raising revenues? (Specifically: Title IV, Auctions and Uses of Auction Proceeds.)
Well, then, the bill should not have been introduced in the Senate and it should not be debated there.
Unless the U.S. Constitution has no meaning.
U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 7. All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.
The pro-regulation, pro-tax, pro-crush-the-economy side of the global warming issue -- supporters of Lieberman-Warner included -- want to claim the moral high ground in the debate, since inaction will supposedly lead to dead polar bears, endangered crustaceans, and every other bad thing that ever happens.
But doesn't the moral high ground actually belong to those productive members of our society who create wealth, including the tax revenues that finance the government's protection of the environment? Jobs creators have a better claim of doing good than do the jobs destroyers, right?
Anyway, just a thought, prompted by this observation in today's Washington Post:
"This is just a money grab," said James E. Rogers, the chief executive of Duke Energy. Rogers says he supports a cap-and-trade system but argues that this bill raises too much revenue from coal users while diverting too much of it to other purposes. "Only the mafia could create an organization that would skim money off the top the way this legislation would skim money off the top," he said. Duke, with customers in Ohio, Indiana and the Carolinas, relies heavily on coal-fired plants.
The chief political virtue of cap-and-trade -- a complex scheme to reduce greenhouse gases -- is its complexity. This allows its environmental supporters to shape public perceptions in essentially deceptive ways. Cap-and-trade would act as a tax, but it's not described as a tax. It would regulate economic activity, but it's promoted as a "free market" mechanism. Finally, it would trigger a tidal wave of influence-peddling, as lobbyists scrambled to exploit the system for different industries and localities. This would undermine whatever abstract advantages the system has.
And the basic truth that too many policymakers want to avoid addressing: "If we suppress emissions, we also suppress today's energy sources, and because the economy needs energy, we suppress the economy."
And The Wall Street Journal, "Cap and Spend," which does a great job of detailing just how this vast wealth transfer would be parcelled out by politicians.
When cap and trade has been used in the past, such as to reduce acid rain, the allowances were usually distributed for free. A major difference this time is that the allowances will be auctioned off to covered businesses, which means imposing an upfront tax before the trade half of cap and trade even begins. It also means a gigantic revenue windfall for Congress.
Ms. Boxer expects to scoop up auction revenues of some $3.32 trillion by 2050. Yes, that's trillion. Her friends in Congress are already salivating over this new pot of gold. The way Congress works, the most vicious floor fights won't be over whether this is a useful tax to create, but over who gets what portion of the spoils. In a conference call with reporters last Thursday, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry explained that he was disturbed by the effects of global warming on "crustaceans" and so would be pursuing changes to ensure that New England lobsters benefit from some of the loot.
Senate will resume consideration of the motion to proceed to consideration of S. 3036, Climate Security Act, and vote on the motion to invoke cloture
on the motion to proceed at approximately 5:30 p.m.
Perhaps the most straight-forward thing you'll hear from the Senate this week.
The law firm Milberg, down to one name, is close to a deal with prosecutors to settle charges the firm engaged in a various federal crimes in paying kickbacks to lead plaintiffs in class-action lawsuits. The WSJ:
Class-action law firm Milberg LLP is close to a settlement that could end a federal prosecution of the firm for alleged kickbacks, according to two people familiar with the discussions. The deal would mark the climax of a case that has roiled the American plaintiff's bar.
While a deal could still fall apart, the sides have made progress after weeks of talks that have centered on the payment Milberg will have to make as part of a settlement. Last summer, prosecutors had sought about $50 million in fines and penalties, but the demand mushroomed this year to about $100 million, say people familiar with the negotiations. Recently, Milberg and prosecutors have zeroed in on a payout in the neighborhood of $75 million, these people say.
And from Reuters, a story on the today's sentencing of Mel Weiss.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Class-action legend Melvyn Weiss can expect a rough ride on Monday when he is sentenced by a judge who handed down the maximum penalty to Weiss's former partner for his role in a kickbacks scheme involving their former law firm.
The 72-year-old Weiss, who built a multibillion-dollar shareholder litigation empire around a law firm now known as Milberg LLP, pleaded guilty to a racketeering charge in March.
More at Portfolio, a feature story on the Bill Lerach-Mel Weiss duo, with such tidbits as: "Compared with Lerach, Weiss has always been the more compelling and complex character, down to the diamond pink ring that he will probably be wearing to his sentencing hearing."
With all the deals done, the sentences issued, wouldn't now be a good time for Congress to hold an oversight hearing into the predations of Milberg Weiss and the plaintiff's bar?
P.S. That Boomtown Rats' song? "I Don't Like Mondays." Although "Rat Trap" might also fit.
Congress is back from its Memorial Day recess, with the Senate setting its cap for cap-and-trade anti-global warming legislation. You know, there's an old German saying: Lieber man wärmer als Lieberman-Warner.*
The Senate convenes at 2 p.m. and is scheduled to vote at 5:30 p.m. on cloture on a motion to proceed to S. 3036, the Climate Security Bill. The House convenes Tuesday at 2 p.m. The week's floor schedule includes"> H.R. 3021, the 21st Century Green High-Performing Public School Facilities Act; the conference report on S.Con.Res. 70, the budget resolution; and perhaps H.R. 2642, the war supplemental. The House floor schedule for the week is here.
Executive Branch: President Bush has a meeting scheduled this morning on the economy and tax cuts (10:50 a.m., EEOB). The White House congressional picnic is Wednesday afternoon; on Thursday the president makes remarks at the ceremonial groundbreaking for the U.S. Institute of Peace, yet another building on the Mall. (With a webcam, too.) He then meets with the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Jan Peter Balkenende. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is also in town, meeting with POTUS on Wednesday. Secretary Paulson gives remarks in Dubai today on investment. Commerce Secretary Gutierrez is in Kiev, Ukraine, midweek; on Saturday, he's in St. Petersburg, Russia. USTR Ambassador Schwab is at the OECD Ministerial in Paris June 3-4.
Economic reports: Today is the release of the ISM report for May. Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the May jobs figures. More.
* "Better warmer than Lieberman-Warner." Roughly. Very roughly. And it's a joke, anyway.
Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor Emily Stover De- Rocco sees Penn State as a driver of innovation and the Pennsylvania economy — something she plans to highlight in her new role as visiting senior policy fellow in Penn State’s Office of Workforce and Economic Development.
DeRocco, who is senior vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based National Association of Manufacturers, said this will be an opportunity to use her education and experience to shape the university’s role on a broader level.
“Higher education and universities around the country are taking on a much higher role in the transformation that’s occurring in education, our economy and the work force,” she said. “Penn State has for a long time had a substantial impact on the regional economy.”
DeRocco is an alumna of Penn State and will receive the university’s Distinguished Alumni Award.
This week's "Cool Stuff Being Made" takes us to the American cigar capital of ...Scranton, Pa.?
You bet. As Dominic Keating, company president, tells us on our factory tour, Avanti Cigar Company is the nation's largest producer of all-tobacco cigars, exclusively. From the company's website:
With prices that start at 45 cents each and top out at a dollar and a quarter, the cigar lines produced by Avanti Cigar Company are not status symbols. But for the serious connoisseur who wants to experience a unique, mild, and flavorful smoke, these Italian style cheroots are anything but a step down.
"We feel it's our turn now to be part of the cigar phenomenon" says Tony Suraci, Jr., marketing director and part of the third generation of the Scranton, Pennsylvania-based clan that produces Parodi, DeNobili, Avanti, Petri, and several other regionally recognized brand names for the Toscano-style cigar market. All told, the company manufactures and distributes over 30 million 100% U.S. tobacco cigars annually. While those numbers might sound impressive, the company routinely sold two to three times that number during its heyday in the 1960s. Nonetheless, Avanti still produces more all-tobacco cigars than any other U.S. company.
Mr. Keating does a nice job of explaining the machinery and processes and people, with lots of detail along the way.
Washington, DC - Just as the U.S. Senate is poised to vote on the Lieberman-Warner America's Climate Security Act (S. 2191), a new poll finds an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose the higher energy costs that Lieberman-Warner would impose.
The poll, conducted by the Public Opinion and Policy Center of the National Center for Public Policy Research, found that 65% of Americans reject spending even a penny more for gasoline in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The number rejecting raising gas prices in an effort to combat global warming has increased by 17 percentage points -- or 35% -- in just over two months. The National Center conducted a similar survey in late February.
There's more here, including the questions and crosstabs, a sign of confidence in the poll and its results.
Congressman Bart Gordon (D-TN) helped push passage of legislation that will create an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy. That agency will harness some of the best minds in America to help the nation develop solar, nuclear and other alternative energy, Gordon says.
“Bring in a program director, get the public sector, the private sector, the national labs, the universities, everyone together in trying to really break through,” says Gordon, a guest on this week’s “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick” radio program. “We’re going to have to have some major breakthroughs.”
Gordon, who is also chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, also talked about that panel's examination of ways to improve electronics recycling, or e-waste management.
Washington Post Columnist Bob Samuelson regularly gives his readers the straight dope on politics and the economy. Samuelson has been a guest on “America’s Business” before. He returns to talk about presidential candidates, free trade, and an issue on many people’s minds – sky high gasoline prices.
Americans love their gadgets but when our laptops, cellphones and video games break or go obsolete they end up in the garbage can. However, Mike will talk to Electronics Recyclers International Chief Executive Officer John Shegerian about how his company is turning a lot of that electronic junk into gold.
Keeping your tires properly inflated is one way to improve gas mileage. But did you know filling tires with nitrogen can improve gas mileage even more? Branick Industries President Brian Brasch will visit “America’s Business” to talk about his company’s nitrogen tire inflation systems.
In our regular segments, Renee Giachino of American Justice Partnership gives us the latest on tort reform and commentator Hank Cox recalls the “The Way It Was.” And the National Association of Manufacturers President Gov. John Engler will close the program with “The Last Word.”
For more about “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick” and to listen to the program online, please click here. And for video highlights and more, check out www.americasbusiness.org.
While the U.S. Congress blocks trade agreements that would lower tariffs against U.S. exports, other countries busily reach deals. From Colombia Reports:
The Free trade agreement between Canada and Colombia will be ready in the first week of June, Colombian Minister of Agriculture told Caracol Radio.
The two countries finished another round of talks this weekend and are almost ready presenting a final agreement. ‘The most difficult issues are dealt with,” he said. “We hope that in the first week of June the treaty between the two countries is ready,” he said.
The National Review's editor, Rich Lowry, cites NAM Chief Economist David Huether to issue a bipartisan critique of the presidential candidates' position on energy and global warming. Well, mostly a critique of McCain. From The Corner:
The Party of Cheap Energy? [Rich Lowry]
Higher energy prices are threatening to stoke broader inflation and are eating into workers' paychecks, as USA Today noted yesterday: “Already, says David Huether, economist for the National Association of Manufacturers, soaring energy prices mean that the average worker's wages have fallen, when adjusted for inflation. `If you exclude energy, real wages would be rising now,’ Huether says.” Wouldn't it be a great time for the GOP to favor cheap, abundant energy? Especially when the nomination of Barack Obama is creating an opening among working-class voters who are especially feeling the pinch? Alas, the GOP nominee supports a scheme to make energy more expensive in an ineffectual gesture toward addressing a theoretical threat from global warming. What a missed opportunity.
The Bigger the Crisis, the Bigger the Contribution
May 30, 2008
From a Union of Concerned Scientists' fundraising letter:
With the global warming crisis reaching a critical point, each of us must strengthen our commitment to meeting this threat. Please donate today to ensure your donation will be doubled.
UCS is uniquely positioned to seize the opportunities presented by heightened public awareness about global warming, strong pressure on policy makers to take action, and a new president in the White House. We are a trusted voice among the scientific community and in Washington, DC, and our groundbreaking scientific analysis helps steer policy makers toward the best solutions before it is too late.
Your donation will allow us to respond quickly to the rapidly changing policy landscape in the coming months. Please make a generous donation to the UCS Matching Gift Fund today.
Trusted, eh?
The full letter is here. OK, granted the letter lacks the more refined touches, you know, the weeping polar bears, but... "before it is too late." Apocalypse, now.
With the Senate to begin the debate Monday on the Lieberman-Warner cap and trade, tax and spend legislation, much excellent commentary is appearing around the web.
Last week the Natural Resources Defense Council put out a report claiming “Doing Nothing on Global Warming Comes With Huge Price Tag.” Covering the report’s release, the Austin American-Statesman wrote: “If the United States doesn’t do something soon to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it could cost the country $3.8 trillion annually from higher energy and water costs, real estate losses from hurricanes, rising sea levels and other problems, an environmental group predicted Thursday.” The NRDC’s report is a case study in how environmental groups distort science to deceive the American public.
Roy W. Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, in The National Review, "Sacrifices to the Climate Gods":
Lieberman-Warner will, in effect, punish the use of energy by making it more expensive. Yet, energy is necessary for all human activities. We are already causing a food crisis around the world by converting food, such as corn, into liquid fuels for transportation. Now, with the Climate Security Act, we will also be causing additional turmoil at home as the poor struggle to survive in a world where only the middle class and wealthy can afford to live relatively comfortably. We will, in effect, be sacrificing even more humans at the altar of radical environmentalism in the vain hope that the gods in charge of weather and climate will look favorably upon us, and not destroy us.
Charles Krauthamner, The Washington Post, "Carbon Chastity":
Predictions of catastrophe depend on models. Models depend on assumptions about complex planetary systems -- from ocean currents to cloud formation -- that no one fully understands. Which is why the models are inherently flawed and forever changing. The doomsday scenarios posit a cascade of events, each with a certain probability. The multiple improbability of their simultaneous occurrence renders all such predictions entirely speculative. ...Yet on the basis of this speculation, environmental activists, attended by compliant scientists and opportunistic politicians, are advocating radical economic and social regulation. "The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity," warns Czech President Vaclav Klaus, "is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism."
Senate Chamber
Program for Monday: Senate will resume consideration
of the motion to proceed to consideration of S. 3036, Climate
Security Act, and vote on the motion to invoke cloture
on the motion to proceed at approximately 5:30
p.m.
Investor's Business Daily today praises Exxon-Mobil for having a refreshing point of view, that is, the company is in the business of producing energy.
Speaking to reporters after the annual meeting of Exxon stockholders Wednesday, CEO Rex Tillerson shoved political correctness aside and insisted the science on climate change is not settled and "that to not have a debate on it is irresponsible" and that to "suggest we know everything about these issues is irresponsible."
Also irresponsible is to ignore the growing energy requirements of the U.S. and world economy, hoping they will be met solely by sources such as biofuels which actually harm the environment by leading to cutting down forests and disturbing the soil to plant crops destined for our gas tanks, releasing huge amounts of CO2 in the process.
Tillerson says that "everyone agrees that notwithstanding the growth in all other options for supplying energy, renewables, nuclear, biomass alternatives, you are still going to require substantial fossil fuels to meet energy needs, and two-thirds is going to come from oil and natural gas."
Oil sands, the Bakken formation, oil shale ....if we developed our domestic energy resources, we can meet that demand.
NEW YORK (Associated Press) - North Dakota's mineral resources director says a $1.85 billion deal between two Texas companies is the biggest oil transaction on record for the state's part of the Williston Basin.
In 1996 the United States and other countries accounting for over 90 percent of world trade in computers, semiconductors, and other information technology products agreed in the World Trade Organization to eliminate their import tariffs on all such products. As a result, the United States became a huge exporter of these products. Now, over 10 years later, the European Union (EU) has decided to start imposing 14 percent import duties on new information technology products in violation of the agreement.
Their rationale is that these new products didn’t exist in 1996 and many of them, such as computer monitors that can receive TV signals could be considered consumer goods. Duh! As NAM President John Engler just told the press, “Integration of electronics into more and more multifunction products is the future of the electronics industry. We need to encourage this product evolution with liberal tariff treatment, not discourage it with protectionism. If the EU is permitted to make its own definitions of what is covered, everyone else will do so too – and pretty soon the Information Technology Agreement will just be history.”
The U.S. Trade Representative said she had enough, and has initiated dispute settlement consultations with the EU in the WTO. (Ambassador Susan Schwab's news release here, and her statement is here.) Japan has joined as a co-complainant. While we hope that EU will see that it has violated its sworn agreement and will retract, if it does not then we want to see a dispute case adjudicated by the WTO. We play by the rules and we want the EU to do so also. High-tech products such as these are our largest export, and we struck a bargain that the EU and others have to live up to.
MILAN, Italy (AP) - First it was the film and the book. Now the next stop for Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" is opera.
La Scala officials say the Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli has been commissioned to produce an opera on the international multiformat hit for the 2011 season at the Milan opera house. The composer is currently artistic director of the Arena in Verona.
U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab has announced a challenge to the European Union’s duties being imposed on certain high-tech products, invoking the WTO’s dispute resolution since these products are supposed to be duty free under the WTO Information Technology Agreement. (Schwab news release here, and her statement is here.)
The EU’s behavior is your basic protectionism, but in trying to shield its high-tech manufacturers from competitors it violates a trade agreement that sought to encourage global trade and innovation. Specifically, the products included in the technology agreement but now facing duties.
Cable or satellite boxes capable of accessing the Internet
Flat panel displays for computers
Certain computer printers that can scan, copy or fax.
The EU’s action would, for example, redefine computer monitors that can receive video signals to be television sets, hitting them with a 14 percent duty. And the stakes are high: Schwab said global exports of these products are estimated at more than $70 billion.
If the EU is permitted to make its own definitions of what is covered, everyone else will do so too – and pretty soon the Information Technology Agreement will just be history. Exports of high technology goods such as integrated circuits and related products are the largest U.S. export. Maintaining an environment that supports the U.S. high tech manufacturing sectors is critical to the future of U.S manufacturing.
You would think the EU has learned by now that walling yourself off from the world is no way to encourage innovation. Computers are morphing into cell-phones are transmogrifying into televisions becoming who-knows-what and the EU thinks it gains an edge by keeping out new products its consumers want? In the short term, perhap its manufacturers benefits, but in the long term protectionism invites stagnation.
Of course, it’s not our concern if the EU adopts stupid policies that damage its member countries. That’s their business, especially since no politicians here in the United States regard the European Union as a superior model for trade or labor policy, right? But when the EU violates agreements and harm manufacturers based in the United States, it is time to act – and the WTO provides us a rules-guided venue in which to do so.
Columbus, IND. – Cummins Inc. (NYSE: CMI) announced today that Joe Loughrey, President and Chief Operating Officer, will retire from Cummins in March 2009. Effective this Aug. 1, Loughrey will become Cummins Vice Chairman and remain a member of the Board of Directors until his retirement.
“Shortly after my 35th anniversary with Cummins, I will retire from the Company,” Loughrey told Cummins employees today. “I have planned the date of my departure for more than two years as part of ongoing and regular succession discussions with the Board of Directors.
“With Tim [Solso] continuing in his role as Chairman, and the two of us being too close in age for me to replace him, my retirement gives the Board ample opportunity to observe and evaluate potential future leaders of the Company,” Loughrey added.
Loughrey has been President and COO of Cummins, the world’s largest independent diesel engine manufacturer, since May 2005.
Joe and Cummins are national leaders on workforce issues, and he helped really energize and focus the Manufacturing Institute's efforts in this area during his tenure as the Institute's president.
As noted here, environmental and public health groups are suing the Environmental Protection Agency for its ozone rules, arguing that the EPA should have followed the recommendations of staff scientists and advisors in setting a more stringent emissions standard.
Ozone NAAQS Litigation Group v. EPA (D.C. Circuit active) -- Environmental
Validity of EPA's ozone regulation
The NAM is a member of the Ozone NAAQS Litigation Group, which filed a petition for review 5/27/08 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit challenging the validity of the EPA's final regulation lowering certain ozone limits under the Clean Air Act. The American Lung Association, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and others are also challenging the rule, and are expected to argue that the EPA did not follow the advice of their scientific advisers to issue a tougher standard. No statement of issues has yet been filed, but the suit is expected to raise questions relating to the EPA's process and the validity of the data underpinning the stricter standard.
From the other side comes an NRDC news release, noting, "The public interest law firm Earthjustice is filing the lawsuit on behalf of the American Lung Association, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Environmental Defense Fund, National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), and Appalachian Mountain Club." The groups' petition for review is available here.
MIDLAND, Mich., May 28, 2008 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ -- The Dow Chemical Company [DOW] announced today that on June 1 it will raise the price of all of its products by up to 20 percent - depending on their exposure to rising energy, feedstock and transportation costs - and will review all terms to all customers.
Andrew N. Liveris, Dow chairman and CEO, said the sweeping price increases and reviews are essential as the Company attempts to mitigate the extraordinary rise in energy and related raw material costs.
"Our first quarter feedstock and energy bill leapt a staggering 42 percent year over year, and that trajectory has continued, with the cost of oil and natural gas climbing ever higher," Liveris said. "The new level of hydrocarbons and energy costs is putting a strain on the entire value chain and is forcing difficult discussions with customers about resetting the value proposition for our products."
Dow spent $8 billion on energy and hydrocarbon-based feedstock costs in 2002. At the current rate, those costs would climb to $32 billion this year.
"For years, Washington has failed to address the issue of rising energy costs and, as a result, the country now faces a true energy crisis, one that is causing serious harm to America's manufacturing sector and all consumers of energy. The government's failure to develop a comprehensive energy policy is causing U.S. industry to lose ground when it comes to global competitiveness, and our own domestic markets are now starting to see demand destruction throughout the U.S.," Liveris said.
"In addition to these price increases," Liveris said, "the Company is continuing its aggressive cost-control plan internally and is accelerating its existing top-down competitiveness review for all of its businesses and manufacturing facilities in the light of these new feedstock and energy prices."
The Supreme Court's two rulings this week in employment discrimination cases brought a startling response today from the Washington Post's editorialists in an opinion piece, "Flawed Victory." The cases were CBOCS West, Inc. v. Humphries -- in which a court majority created a law to ban employer retaliation -- and Gomez-Perez v. Potter, Postmaster General, in which the court found reasons in the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) to give federal employees the right to sue claiming retaliation. The Post concluded:
Protecting employees from retaliation makes sense, but it is not the province of judges to create such protections on the basis of their own beliefs of what is right or wrong, or even on the basis of their intuitive sense of what Congress meant to do or should have done. And those who today praise the outcome shouldn't be upset if in the future justices read into the law new principles that lead to results they may find less acceptable.
The Supreme Court handed down a pair of well-reasoned, fair-minded rulings this week upholding the rights of employees who charge age and race discrimination. The decisions, which forbid employers from retaliating against such workers, are a welcome break from some of the recent rulings by this court that have ignored precedent and common sense to throw out legitimate claims of unfair treatment.
We really like the New York Times' editorial page. It's so predictable you don't have to waste your time reading it.
We've commented before that support of the Employee Free Choice Act is a losing issue in general election campaigns because most Americans will recoil from the idea of eliminating secret ballots in the workplace. Polling conducted for the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace indicates as much.
So, yes indeed, candidates would be smart to hammer away at candidates who have voted for or endorsed card check.
And here we go....
In Oregon, The Employee Freedom Action Committee has run an ad against the new Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, State House Speaker Jeff Merkley, who just won the primary to challenge incumbent Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR). The group is affiliated with the Center for Union Facts, which publishes the Laborpains.org blog we often link to around here.
The ad in The Oregonian states:
Jeff Merkley won the Democratic primary Tuesday through a mailed private ballot by Oregon Citizens. Yet he supports eliminating the right to a private vote when unions are enlisting new members. Hard to believe?
Gordon Smith should renounce this rogue and the special interests that are bankrolling this organization...Shadowy groups like this are planning to come into Oregon and mislead voters about important issues at stake in this election. Smith has fought hard to protect these interests and now they are protecting him.
How does the ad mislead voters about important issues at stake in this election? What is inaccurate about it?
There's also some misdirection by Merkley's camp about the Employee Free Action Committee connection to Rick Berman, a tobacco lobbyist, a charge that's apparently supposed to trump all discussion of policy and campaign issues.
Seems to us, rather, that the most important question is: "Jeff Merkley won the Democratic primary Tuesday through a mailed private ballot by Oregon Citizens. Yet he supports eliminating the right to a private vote when unions are enlisting new members. Hard to believe?"
P.S. The Eugene Register-Guard covered the story here, a solid piece that goes to the AFL-CIO to defend the merits of the Employee Free Choice Act. A Merkley aide protests shadowy groups, but he does manage to express platitudes: "This is one of many ways to allow working men and women to thrive, to assure good quality jobs with health care and child care benefits."
You know that Brazil has found two large oil fields in the Atlantic Ocean.
You know that the Brazilians are now independent of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Russia…that the Brazilians are free of the Middle East and free of OPEC.
And you know that today, it is illegal to look for oil in the Atlantic, in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, in the Pacific, in northern Alaska, in the shale oil that’s available in the Rocky Mountains. Every one of those has been locked up by our politicians , and you know that it’s time that Americans had a chance to produce more oil and gas, to have refineries here and not be dependent on foreign dictators.
And stop the Warner-Lieberman bill, too.
The site includes an online petition in support of legislation, which Gingrich expects to be introduced in June. So go ahead and sign...$4.00 a gallon gas has a way of focusing one's thinking, even Congress, and action is indeed possible to increase domestic supply.
In all the finger-pointing over the not-quite-a-recession the economy is currently struggling through, how is that the United Auto Workers have so successfully escaped any blame? In case you missed it over the Memorial Day weekend, this Detroit News piece is quite striking, so to speak:
The American Axle strike and separate walkouts this month at two General Motor Corp. plants will take $2.8 billion off the automaker's bottom line, and cost the U.S. economy $8.2 billion -- shaving nearly a percentage point off the gross domestic product, an economist said Friday.
The 87-day walkout against American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc, which ended Thursday, cost GM 330,000 units of production, including 230,000 units in April and May, the automaker reported in a Security and Exchange Commission filing Friday. United Auto Workers strikes against GM plants near Lansing and Kansas City erased 33,000 production units in the second quarter.
The loss of that factory output and related fallout, represents a 0.9 percent decline in the country's GDP, said Mike Montgomery, an economist with Global Insight Inc.
"This has been a difficult process for American Axle workers and there is no doubt that they stood strong through it all," said UAW Vice President Jimmy Settles, director of the union's American Axle Manufacturing Department.
From the Clarksville, Tenn., newspaper, The Leaf-Chronicle, comes a report of the problems that the EPA's more stringent ozone rules will cause local governments and taxpayers...and commuters, and manufacturers, and pretty much everbody. A good story about how after working toward compliance, the county could again become non-compliant, and noting the impact on infrastructure projects, too. From "City Could Fail EPA Standards."
Clarksville will be judged on the new standards when the state reports its scores to the EPA in the summer of 2009. The EPA will then report in 2010 — based on three years of air quality data — who passed and who failed.
And if Clarksville fails?
"You jeopardize your federal highway funds for road projects," Williams said.
Williams calls it a Catch-22, as those federal funds are used on road projects that relieve congestion, and fewer idling cars means cleaner air.
As an example, Williams said four local intersections are on target for remodeling this year to to increase traffic flow using federal CMAQ (Congestion Mitigation Air Quality) funds. If the city was not meeting the EPA's air-quality standards, a position known as "nonattainment," such construction would not be possible.
Under this "8-hour standard," areas that have ozone concentrations higher than 75 ppb too often must look for new ways to cut ozone pollution.
The old standard was 80 ppb, and all Utah communities barely met it. The new limits are expected to pose big challenges for Salt Lake, Davis, Weber, Box Elder, Tooele and Utah counties and more than 300 other U.S. counties.
Pro-regulation advocates among environmental and public health groups are suing the EPA, arguing the restrictions should be tougher.
So more people can pay the price of being out of compliance.
The Los Angeles Times takes editorial note of Colombia President Uribe's extradition of paramilitary leaders to the United States, observing, "Congressional Democrats have for months been playing a bait-and-switch game with Uribe -- they insist that Colombia show progress on human rights and union issues in order to win their support for the trade pact, and then when Uribe gives them what they want, they ask for something else. Uribe's latest move should test their true motives." More ...
Democrats are ostensibly holding up a vote on the Colombia free trade pact because Bogota hasn't done enough to protect union leaders, who have been targeted by the paramilitaries. If the extradition of a large group of paramilitary leaders doesn't placate them, it's hard to imagine what will. Moreover, the trade pact would boost jobs in both the U.S. and Colombia during an economic downturn and cement Colombia as a firm U.S. ally in a region teeming with anti-American sentiment. It looks increasingly as though the real reason Democratic leaders won't vote on the Colombia deal is that they don't want to alienate their organized-labor backers during an election year.
Another blow was dealt recently to the FARC, the communist/narcoterrorist guerillas, with the death in March of one of its founders, Manuel Marulanda. (WSJ story.) The U.S. Congress could apply more pressure, perhaps helping to end the murderous rebellion, with a strong show of support of Colombia's democracy and market.
Do members of Congress really want to be seen as undermining a U.S ally because organized labor tells them to?
UPDATE: FARC, the global terrorists, as well. From Vivirlatino:
Colombian authorities revealed on Tuesday that an email had been found on the computer of fallen rebel leader Raul Reyes, in which the top FARC leader, Alfonso Cano, suggested that they "should plan a project" to carry out an attack in Madrid.
The email has intelligence organizations worried, because according to the initial analysis, FARC as planning to carry out attacks against prominent Colombian personalities in the Spanish capital. "I propose that you create a project that will get the comrades ready for the attack in Madrid," says the message that Cano sent to the head of the FARC.
From the White House transcript of President Bush's visit to Silverado Cable Co., a manufacturer of wire harnesses in Mesa, Arizona.
THE PRESIDENT: [These] guys were showing me a new laser machine they purchased this year, and they purchased it this year because the stimulus package provided a tax incentive to do that. And the reason why that's important is when the economy slowed down, we wanted to stimulate activity.
And so the fact that they purchased the machine meant somebody had to make the machine. And when somebody makes a machine, it means there's jobs at the machine-making place -- plus their employees are more productive, they're more competitive. It makes it more likely they're going to keep their business and expand their business.
Make tax relief permanent, the President says, so companies like Silverado don't have to worry what their tax burden will be two years from now.
The White House photo shows brothers are Bob Simpson Jr., President of Silverado Cable Company and Mitch Simpson, Vice President, who founded the company with five employees. They now employ 70.
The Investor's Business Daily (5/23) recently editorialized that, though Congress is "alarmed by our 'failed' oil markets," it is "mostly the fault of the Congress that we're in this mess." The "markets have failed" because of "Congress's refusal to let oil companies drill on federal lands, thereby cutting sharply into our supply of crude as world demand grows and prices soar both here and abroad." The Daily calls Congress's "ignorance of basic laws of supply and demand...at once bizarre, breathtaking, and frightening," and asserts that "this ridiculous blaming of oil companies must stop, and...the companies must be allowed to get back into the business of pumping oil." Only then will "the markets that ignorant and demagogic politicians called 'failed' [begin to] again turn out plentiful energy at prices people can afford."
Outstanding editorial in today's Wall Street Journal, explaining the rationale behind cap-and-trade -- letting politicians pick winners and losers is one great attraction. Trouble is, the entire country is the loser, so it's really just a question of who's marginally better off. From "Climate Reality Bites":
[For] the most part, the politicians favor cap and trade because it is an indirect tax. A direct tax – say, on gasoline – would be far more transparent, but it would also be unpopular. Cap and trade is a tax imposed on business, disguising the true costs and thus making it more politically palatable. In reality, firms will merely pass on these costs to customers, and ultimately down the energy chain to all Americans. Higher prices are what are supposed to motivate the investments and behavioral changes required to use less carbon.
The other reason politicians like cap and trade is because it gives them a cut of the action and the ability to pick winners and losers. Some of the allowances would be given away, at least at the start, while the rest would be auctioned off, with the share of auctions increasing over time. This is a giant revenue grab. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that these auctions would net $304 billion by 2013 and $1.19 trillion over the next decade. Since the government controls the number and distribution of allowances, it is also handing itself the political right to influence the price of every good and service in the economy.
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that this meddling would cause a cumulative reduction in the growth of GDP by between 0.9% and 3.8% by 2030. Add 20 years, and the reduction is between 2.4% and 6.9% – that is, from $1 trillion to $2.8 trillion.
Since its introduction last October, the Lieberman-Warner bill has been S. 2191. But now Senator Reid has identified next week's debate to be over S. 3036, introduced May 20th. But maybe something else will come up.
Environmental groups, industries, and possibly states today are filing their intent to sue EPA in federal court over the agency's regulation limiting smog. Five groups represented by Earthjustice -- including the American Lung Association, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the National Parks Conservation Association -- will argue that EPA violated the Clean Air Act by not following the advice of their scientific advisers to issue a tougher standard. They will contend that the White House illegally intervened and allowed politics to trump the science. "The president personally engaged in an unprecedented level of intervention and interference," NRDC's John Walke said today. Today is the deadline for filing intent to sue.
The National Association of Manufacturers and other industry groups will counter that EPA issued a standard that is too costly to businesses, and that the agency did not objectively consider the science in deciding to replace a less-stringent requirement. "We believe that EPA cherry-picked the science to stack the deck, leading to the decision to a stricter standard," said NAM's Bryan Brendle. NAM officials declined to indicate who would join them in legal and administrative challenges to EPA's March 13 rule until their notice of intent to sue the agency is filed today. "We're a group with a bunch of people in it," one NAM spokesman said. The Edison Electric Institute, which represents major electric utilities, and at least 14 governors are among those who have sided with NAM's argument. Environmental groups will likely be seconded by governors from at least several Northeast states.
Supporters of even harsher, more jobs-killing regulation are contending that questions of immense importance to the American people, economy and manufacturers should be decided by some GS-14s* in the EPA, and don't you dare question them.
Immediately below we have a post about a new scientific study reporting on possible health consequences of exposure to carbon nanotubes. When injected into the abdomen of mice, some forms of the nanotubes cause lesions, similar to lesions in humans that are precursors to mesothelioma.
An early alert to potential health risks of nanoparticles encourages precautions and perhaps we can escape the real damage caused by asbestosis -- deaths and disabilites of those exposed in past decades in the manufacturing process -- as well as the damage of abusive litigation.
But litigation we expect. There are so many attorneys out there just looking for another target. From CyberWyre:
It’s been some time since I’ve updated my highest paying AdSense keywords list and I’m surprised by the results that I’ve found. It appears that mesothelioma attorneys are again paying the highest price for online advertising, at $69.10 per click! It has always been the trend that attorneys, insurance companies, and loan consolidation services are among those paying the most for online advertising, as they stand to make the most from a single client than many other businesses advertising online — which is the reason why the term “magazine subscription” is priced at $2.25/click and “mesothelioma treatment options” is over $69/click.
Below are the top-25 most expensive search keywords.
$69.10 mesothelioma treatment options
$66.46 mesothelioma risk
$65.85 personal injury lawyer michigan
$65.74 michigan personal injury attorney
$62.59 student loans consolidation
$61.44 car accident attorney los angeles
$61.26 mesothelioma survival rate
$60.96 treatment of mesothelioma
The study's basic finding was that long carbon nanotubes -- in contrast to the short or curly ones -- created conditions in mice abdomen that resembled lesions that lead to mesothelioma in humans.
Prominently featured in all was the study's coauthor, Andrew Maynard, a physicist and chief science adviser to the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. In The New York Times, Maynard said, "I think there is clear evidence for caution in how they are used and handled." He told The Los Angeles Times that the greatest danger was to workers involved in the manufacturing of nanotubes who might inhale the dust.
The LAT story included useful perspective from a business source:
Sean Murdock, head of the NanoBusiness Alliance, an industry trade group based in Skokie, Ill., said precautions were now in place in many factories, usually requiring workers to wear respirators. Nanotubes are largely made in closed chemical reactors, he added.
"The good news is that we're understanding the potential hazards before we have large-scale use of these products and not four decades later," he said.
NPR's "Science Friday" carried a 24-minute segment on the study, again, pretty balanced. But several of the callers displayed the kind of uncertainty and anxiety that can produce a cultural and political environment that invites litigation. The thought kept recurring: When do the suits start?
In reading up on the study, we encountered this blog, Nanotechnology Law Report, written by John C. Monica, Jr. and Michael E. Heintz of Porter Wright Morris & Arthur. In this post, Monica excerpts a 2005 paper he co-wrote for Nanotechnology Law & Business, "Preparing for Future Health Litigation: The Application of Products Liability Law to Nanotechnology." And here, Heintz discusses a recent GAO report, ""Nanotechnology: Better Guidance Is Needed to Ensure Accurate Reporting of Federal Research Focused on Environmental, Health, and Safety Risks." Looks like a good site to keep up on, nanotechnologywise.
And here's a site that bills itself as the largest portal on the topic of nanotechnology, Nanowerk.com. Looks good.
The Copenhagen Consensus is under way in Denmark, a gathering of economists who are going to attempt to create a reasonable list of priorities for spending money: Do we do more good spending $50 billion on potable water, curing AIDS, fighting maleria, combatting global warming or FILL IN THE BLANK SOCIAL GOOD? A thought-provoking exercise, given that a leading figure in the project is Bjorn Lomborg, the Skeptical Environmentalist who, even while acknowledging climate change, doubts the value of vast government expenditures on global warming that will serve mostly to make the world poorer.
Ronald Bailey of Reason Magazine is on hand, and he reports:
But the fact is that in a world of scarce resources, a couple of big issues will get the bulk of the available resources. Trade-offs have to be made. When Lomborg is speaking of resources, he is basically talking about foreign development aid. What the Copenhagen Consensus hopes to do is help donors, both public and private, to spend their money is ways that solve the most urgent problems.
To illustrate how issues might be ranked, Lomborg cited some findings from a paper dealing with the challenge of disease. Spending $1 billion on controlling tuberculosis would save 1 million lives and result in estimated benefits of $30 billion for a benefit-cost ratio of 30 to 1. Spending $200 million on treating heart disease in poor countries (which accounts for 25 percent of deaths in those countries) with an inexpensive "polypill" combining aspirin and statins would produce $5 billion benefits implying a 25 to 1 benefit-cost ratio. And a $1 billion spent on malaria produces a benefit-cost ratio of 20 to 1.
Engaging in cost-benefit analyses is a bracing antidote to the mix of mysticism and apocalyptic thinking that now dominates public policy debate of the environment.
And in debating costs and benefits, we hope the economists also remember to keep the value of liberty central to their deliberations.
The June 12 issue of The New York Review of Books includes a fascinating analysis of the global warming hysteria by Freeman Dyson in "The Question of Global Warming," a review of two new books on the topic, one by economist William Nordhaus and the other a compendium of papers from a 2005 conference at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. Dyson’s comments bear scrutiny because he is a serious environmentalist and The New York Review of Books is on no one’s list of participants in the great right-wing conspiracy.
“Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion,” Dyson writes, adding that he believes the ethics of environmentalism are “fundamentally sound.” However, he notes that “some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith that belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet.”
Dyson points out gently that many passionate environmentalists believe this emphasis is misplaced, that there are more serious dangers to the planet that should take precedence. “Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment,” he said. But in the history of science, “it has often happened that the majority was wrong and refused to listen to a minority that later turned out to be right. It may—or may not—be that the present is such a time.”
After taking a shot at some climate change propaganda dispensed by the Royal Society of Great Britain, the equivalent of our National Academy of Sciences, Dyson cites the ancient motto of the Royal Society that the present members have apparently lost touch with, “Nullus in Verga,” which means, “Nobody’s word is final.”
A contributor to Matthew Yglesias' Atlantic blog -- which leans Democratic -- has a post entitled, "$150 million is a lot of money..." Excerpt:
Which is why it's strange that almost three weeks after the Service Employees International Union announced that they'd spend precisely that amount both to swing the elections they're targeting and to support a massive mobilization to push for health care reform and the Employee Free Choice Act in the first 100 days of the new administration, not a single major news organization has written about that decision. In fact, nobody's really written about it all, unless Lab Law Weekly's decision to reprint the press release counts.
As noted below in the week ahead, the President visits Silverado Cable Company in Mesa, Arizona tomorrow. A few more details: He's visiting the small, manufacturer of custom wire harnesses to promote the benefits of the recent tax stimulus plan. From The Arizona Republic:
Silverado owner Robert Simpson described being chosen for the visit as "exhilarating."
Silverado Cable Co., founded in 1994, has about 70 employees who work to manufacture custom wire and harnesses. The company works mainly in connection with aerospace and transportations companies, but also does work with the military.
Simpson said he is thankful for the recent stimulus package because the extra funding gives them room to expand.
"We are a small business so all of our funds get directed right back into the company," he said. "But with the stimulus package we can expand and invest in other areas."
“We just run a great company,” Simpson said. “I don’t want to sound immodest, but we have a very, very good track record with our customers. He (Bush) wanted to take a look and see how we are taking advantage of some of the economic opportunities he is presenting. It’s working out great for us.”..[snip]
“Anything from a cigarette lighter to the radar systems, we are involved in putting wiring harnesses together for that,” Simpson said.
Congress is out this week, save for faux proma sessions of the Senate Tuesday and Thursday to prevent recess appointments. The Senate returns more formally next Monday, when it will vote on proceeding to the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill. The House returns on Tuesday, June 3. The latest Congressional Record Daily Digest has more...but not much more.
Executive Branch: President Bush heads to Arizona Tuesday, including a stop in Mesa at the Silverado Cable Company, a manufacturer of custom wire harnesses and cable assemblies. On Wednesday, he delivers the commencement address at the Air Force Academy; on Saturday, it's the commencement address at Furman University in South Carolina. Energy Secretary Bodman spends the first part of the week in Portugal, promoting renewable energy, or energias renováveis, as the case may be. Next weekend, Ambassador Schwab is in Arequipa, Peru, for the APEC Meeting of Ministers Responsible for Trade (MRT).
Economic Reports: From the Commerce Department Tuesday comes the report of April new-home sales; preliminary first-quarter GDP numbers on Thursday, and on Friday, personal income and spending data for April. More here.
Finally, has global warming caused the Club of Rome to move to Scandinavia? From The Economist: "A GROUP of economists, including Nobel laureates, get together this week in Denmark's capital city, concluding on Friday May 30th, to seek new ways to tackle big social, economic and environmental problems facing the planet. The Copenhagen Consensus gathering will address a wide range of issues—hunger, education, trade and subsidies, water and sanitation, climate change—relevant to the development of poor countries in particular." Well, the Copenhagen Consensus Center is headed by the commonsensical Bjorn Lomborg, so that's a good sign.
The Lone Sailor Statue, Wisconsin Square, Norfolk, Va. The wreath was placed in a ceremony on Saturday, May 24, by the Norfolk Branch 5 Fleet Reserve Association. (Photo here. The ship in the background is the USS Wisconsin, a battleship which earned five battle stars in World War II.)
From Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's discussion on Thursday of the week of June 2, when the Senate returns from a one-week recess:
Mr. REID. Mr. President, at about 5:30 p.m. on Monday, June 2, the Senate will proceed to a rollcall vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to the climate security legislation. Under a previous order, the time from 4:30 until 5:30 p.m. will be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees.
I failed to remind everyone that on Tuesday, the week we get back, all Senators should be dressed in their finest. We are going to have our Senate picture taken. So I would hope everyone will remember that and make sure they wear the right clothes for posterity when we have our picture taken. That will be Tuesday. It is scheduled for a time if somebody wears the wrong clothes, we can send them home and have them dress properly.
The economics behind building new or expanding a refinery in rural areas are extremely challenging. We got a lot of people looking at it. We got more people looking in ND than anywhere else in the country.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) on Fox News Sunday, being interviewed by Chris Wallace:
WALLACE: Haven't you blocked the Protect America Act for months now?
VAN HOLLEN: Absolutely. The provisions that we have in place are the ones that the president asked for. What they're asking for now is to essentially give amnesty to telecommunication companies that collaborated with the Bush administration.
We don't think that's part of looking forward in providing for national security and in making sure that we can listen in to those phone calls with Al Qaida.
So it is now acceptable to refer to American corporations as "collaborators" when they follow a legal order to help intercept terrorist communications? Communications by those who would gladly blow up U.S. citizens?
Speaking of ports, South Carolina and trade, it appears that the South Carolina-Georgia cooperation to build a new port facility in Jasper County, S.C., will have a major economic impact. From The State, March 7:
States from North Carolina to Florida have been investing heavily in ports, with an eye to bigger cargo ships being able to move through the Panama Canal in 2012. The lack of a long-term answer in South Carolina would at some point begin affecting the interest shown by major shipping companies.
To break the logjam, Gov. Sanford and Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue forged a deal to have the two states develop the Jasper site in a joint effort, under a still-to-be-settled final structure.
What persuaded Georgia to stop the fight? Mr. Davis said a key argument went like this: Join us and share in Jasper’s success, or after a drawn-out legal fight, get nothing.
I’m sure that was a big part of it, but it must have helped that the two governors are free-market conservatives and political mavericks.
Since the two governors agreed last year, the process is rolling along, Mr. Davis says. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers controls the site, because it has been dumping river dredge there. Corps leadership now says it will expedite the process of getting the construction approved.
The National Summit on American Competitiveness in Chicago last Thursday featured two governors, Janet Napolitano of Arizona, a Democrat, and Mark Sanford of South Carolina, a Republican. Turns out their administrations share an appreciation for the role of trade in strengthening their states' economies.
PHOENIX - Despite slower economic growth in much of the nation, Arizona showed its strength in the global economy by increasing exports to the world by nearly 5 percent in 2007. Governor Janet Napolitano today announced that Arizona exports grew $1 billion in 2007, with Arizona companies exporting $19.2 billion in products through the end of December, up from $18.3 billion in 2006.
Mexico was again Arizona's largest trading partner, with $5.2 billion in sales, even though exports to that country dropped slightly, while other nations dramatically increased exports from Arizona in the last year. Canada continues to show demand for Arizona products, posting a 16 percent gain from 2006, and coming in second, with $2.14 billion.
China comes in at number three, with $1.3 billion in exports, a rise of 10.1 percent from 2006.
"This exemplifies our state's ability to produce goods that the rest of the world needs and wants," said Napolitano. "Global exports - especially in times of slow U.S. growth - are important to the state's economy and the many businesses that benefit from selling their products worldwide."
The South Carolina Department of Commerce and the State Ports Authority today announced the state’s 2007 exports totaled more than $16.5 billion in goods sold to 198 countries around the world, representing a 21.6% increase over 2006 totals. In 2007, South Carolina’s 21.6% export growth ranked it 9th among the 54 states and U.S. territories and number one in the Southeast.
The state’s top 10 export industries last year were vehicles, machinery, plastics, electrical machinery, rubber, paper and paperboard, organic chemicals, optics and medical equipment, wood pulp, and manmade staple fibers. Of the top 25 product sectors, the sector that experienced the greatest export growth in 2007 was iron and steel, which rose 105.7% totaling more than $163 million. This increase was followed closely by the aircraft and spacecraft sector which rose 105.6% with exports totaling nearly $94 million. Other growing export product sectors included automobiles – up 64.4%, aluminum – up 31.8%, copper products - up 28.9%, and paper and paperboard – up 27.6% (all compared to 2006 totals).
“As South Carolina’s exports continue to grow, so do the businesses engaged in export activity in our state. South Carolina’s diverse economy is producing more products enjoyed by more people all around the world and this export growth directly translates into job opportunities for South Carolinians. Last year’s numbers are also a testament that the state’s business-friendly climate is working to strengthen our ability to compete in the global economy,” said Joe Taylor, Secretary of Commerce.
Germany is now South Carolina's No. 1 export market, with BMW getting much of the credit. Exports up 80 percent in a single year!
Well worth the money is a two-hour boat tour of the harbor at Norfolk, Virginia. Commerce and national defense on great display. This weekend, new cargo cranes are being unloaded.
Three new cranes for loading and unloading cargo container ships arrived Friday evening at the Virginia Port Authority's Norfolk International Terminals.The $24 million shipment left China on March 31 aboard the Zhen Hua 16.
Crews will spend the weekend undoing the fasteners securing the gangly, 208-foot-tall cranes to the ship's deck, said Jeff Florin, the authority's chief engineer.
The blue-and-white behemoths will then be rolled onto a just-constructed 900-foot-long stretch of wharf. The cranes should be off the vessel by the end of next week and in service by July, following adjustments and testing, he said.
The Virginia Port Authority has a website with more information about the shipping of the cranes and their intended use on the North Wharf Extension at Norfolk International Terminals.
One of the toughest guys in the history of American industry was Henry Clay Frick who was a partner of Andrew Carnegie in building the domestic steel industry. Like Carnegie, Frick was a little guy, born to grinding poverty who worked his way to the top with sagacity and fierce determination.
He got started borrowing money from a relative to buy some coal seams and a coke plant. When the market dropped through the floor in 1873, he used the opportunity to buy new coke plants that were idle. When the market recovered, he was off and running big time.
He did quality work and had a gift for efficiency, whipping a disparate group of miners, coke operations and shippers into a disciplined machine. In 1882, he merged his operations with Carnegie’s, bought out rivals and built up the Union Railroad to connect his various operations.
Frick was the tough guy in the 1892 Homestead strike that led to a shootout in which seven striking workers and three guards were killed. This incident, a shameful episode in the history of American industry, led to a rift between Frick and Carnegie.
It led also to an assassination attempt in which Frick was shot twice and stabbed three times. He fought off his attacker and refused an anesthetic while a doctor probed for the bullets -- so he could keep working. Manufacturing is not for sissies.
Like Carnegie, Frick left his vast fortune to charity, mostly educational causes.
Kudos to Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK) for sponsoring an amendment to the defense authorization bill (H.R. 5658) to modify a ridiculous measure that blocked the Department of Defense from using synthetic alternative fuels that had a higher carbon content than regular old oil. From the floor discussion (which we saved here):
My amendment would amend section 526 to allow DOD and other Federal agencies to enter into contracts to purchase generally available fuels that are not predominantly derived from nonconventional fuel sources. Any contract to purchase such fuel must specify that the lifecycle greenhouse emissions are less than that of conventional petroleum sources.
Well, then, semi-kudos. Boren concedes that the amendment is a compromise, and Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) notes that the language falls short of repealing the entire section.
That there was ever language like this in the first place in a national defense bill tells you how environmental shibboleths are a priority, a WRONG priority, for some policymakers. Section 506 originally came about as a concession to the greens who want to stop the development of Canadian oil sands. The idea that America's national security should be sacrificed to environmental purism and pieties is mind-boggling.
President Bush delivered remarks on the importance of trade on the South Lawn of the White House this morning to cap off World Trade Week. The President highlighted why exports are so important to our economy today and called on Speaker Pelosi to allow a vote on the pending Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement in the House of Representatives. The event was set to a great back drop of manufactured products: a Caterpillar loader, a Case Tractor, and the President delivered his speech right next to a Harley Davidson motorcycle.
The case for trade was made quite simply:
Trade is in the interests of the working people here in America, pure and simple. Trade is in the interests of small business owners and farmers and ranchers, pure and simple. And that's why I'm a strong believer that the United States Congress needs to pass trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea.
The President also highlighted how the Colombia agreement will help restore fair trade for U.S. manufacturers:
Most of the goods coming from Colombia enter America duty-free -- isn't that interesting? -- as a result of actions of Congress in the past. Most goods that Colombia makes come to our country without any tax. And I've just described to you the goods and services we send to Colombia are taxed. And that, frankly, doesn't seem very fair to me. It didn't seem fair to the Colombian government, either. They agree with me: Let's just treat each other fairly.
Their goods are not taxed; our goods are. It seems unfair to me. And people of Congress should understand how unfair it is to the workers in their districts, or the farmers in their districts, or the people working hard for a living in their districts, that count upon selling goods overseas.
To read the full remarks click here. To see the the great collection of manufactured goods at the White House, click here.
An alliance of business, education, government and other groups are creating an advanced manufacturing hub in South Texas near the Mexican border. Supporters say this hub will be a new Silicon Valley for manufacturing and technology.
“Our target is we have 17,000 manufacturing jobs today on the U.S. side in our Rio South Texas Region,” she said. “Our target is 25,000 – to create up to 25,000 jobs in manufacturing in the region.”
Oil prices are record high with no relief in sight. But Northern Alliance of Independent Producers President Bob Harms will talk to Mike about a recent survey that shows there could be billions of barrels of oil in the United States under the plains of North Dakota and Montana.
The U.S. Senate is considering a bill to help prevent global warming that critics claim is based on bad science and will hurt the U.S. economy. American Council for Capital Formation top economist Margo Thorning will discuss a study on the economic down side of the Warner-Lieberman climate change bill.
“America’s Business” will also have a conversation with Case Western Reserve law professor Jonathan Adler about how a controversial bill to increase government oversight over waterways could affect business. And the program will talk to Pine Hall Brick President Fletcher Steele about how his company is using an unusual fuel – sawdust – to help slash its utility bills.
In our regular segments, Renee Giachino of American Justice Partnership gives us the latest on tort reform and commentator Hank Cox recalls “The Way It Was.” And the National Association of Manufacturers President Gov. John Engler will close the program with “The Last Word.”
For more about “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick” and to listen to the program online, please click here. And for video highlights and more, check out www.americasbusiness.org.
A good explanatory piece and legal analysis in the National Law Journal on the Clean Water Restoration Act, the legislation that would expand federal regulation of entirely localized bodies of water, including fens, bogs, ponds, intermittent creeks and darn I got my shoes wet. "Not a drop unregulated" is by John C. Martin and Amy B. Chasanov at Washington-based Patton Boggs, who represented an industry plaintiff in a relevant case.
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee recently held a hearing on the Clean Water Restoration Act, the legislation that would delete references to "navigable water" in the Clean Water Act, with proponens claiming the change would "restore" past reading of the law, prior to recent court decisions the authors discuss in the piece. The proposed policy is foolish, unworkable and power-accruing.
As Martin and Chasanov explain:
[The] Clean Water Act is intended to balance the state/federal relationship in a way that preserves state authority. Its authors expected to maintain the "primary" responsibility of states to regulate their waters. Of course, most states already regulate "state waters" and define the term more broadly than federal waters. Indeed, many enforce standards more stringent than federal law would require. More important, these programs are tailored to local conditions and needs. That a part of the states' programs is beyond federal control does not do violence to the act's original structure. Indeed, if the states don't have some modicum of regulatory power reserved under the statute, one finds it difficult to conceive of any "balance" between state and federal authority — much less the states' "primary" authority prescribed by the act.
Of course, Congress is free to change this balance. But we doubt extending Clean Water Act jurisdiction to its constitutional limits would make for good policy. Surely, neither the Corps nor the EPA welcomes the prospect of examining every discharge or disturbance to all isolated — occasionally moist — depressions everywhere in the country. We find it hard to believe that regulators would want the burden of mapping local ditches or intermittent trickles in every state; their resources are better expended elsewhere.
Case Western Reserve law professor Jonathan Adler testified at the House hearings (written testimony), and he appears as a guest this week on "America's Business with Mike Hambrick," explaining the legislation would misallocate limited federal resources AND invite endless litigation. The interview is available here as an .mp3 file.
The ranking members of the respective Senate and House Intelligence committees have offered a major concession in the debate over FISA authority, the law that allows the federal government to conduct surveillance of foreign communications that pass through an American communications nexus. At a news conference yesterday, Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) and Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) laid out a plan that would give a secret court's the ability to review the legality of intercepts conducted with the cooperation of telecommunications companies. These companies acted in good-faith compliance with national security orders and for it have been made the target of 40 multi-million-dollar lawsuits.
The litigation is yet another example of trial lawyers hunting for the big payout/payoff, but has even broader implications for the private sector: If you're going to be sued following a lawful order to help prevent terrorist attacks, the willingness to cooperate diminishes. So the Senate passed version of FISA legislation, S. 2248, provided retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies. That bill would have passed the House, but leadership prevented an up-and-down vote on that measure and passed an alternative largely as political cover.
Hence the compromise offered by Bond and Hoekstra. From AP:
The White House favors the Senate version of an electronic surveillance bill that grants full immunity to the telecommunications companies. The House-approved version would let the cases go to court, leaving it up to judges to determine whether the companies acted illegally.
The new Republican proposal_ which Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri said is backed by the White House and intelligence agencies_ would allow the FISA court to decide. It would require the attorney general to certify that the companies acted lawfully and at the request of the president.
The court would be allowed to read the requests to telecom companies for the wiretaps to be placed, and the plaintiffs could file their complaints with the court. The court could dismiss the lawsuits if it finds that supported by "a preponderance of the evidence."
This proposal allows the lawsuits to continue -- not to mention the associated politicking -- which means a continued disincentive for corporations to agree with the government's legitimate national security and intelligence requests. But, it does mean a court's determination as to the legality of the federal action and cooperation by the telecommunications companies. That's what the opponents want, right? A determination of legality?
Well, the ACLU is still opposed. And the left-wing MoveOn.org and the SEIU are running ads excoriating Blue Dog Democrats who voted for telecom immunity. The opponents on the left appear not to believe that there is a real risk of terrorist attacks against U.S. citizens, regard the Administration as totalitarian thugs and the telecommunications companies as, well...the leading, fevered Daily Kos blogger on the topic compares these American businesses to Mafia and drug kingpins.
The damage to US intelligence gathering has accumulated, and in August will become overwhelming. The FISA court orders which have enabled some intelligence gathering to continue despite the expiration of the earlier bill will themselves expire in August. At that point, Usama bin Laden can begin using pay phones.
The need for congressional action is pressing. If the Bond-Hoekstra compromise, no matter its failings, is what it takes to preserve legitimate intelligence gathering abilities, then by all means, put the measure at the top of the agenda when Congress comes back from their Memorial Day week.
UPDATE (Saturday, 9:55 a.m.): The ACLU rejects this wolf in sheep's clothing, kangaroo court, green light, linchpin, blank check. Effective surveillance authority that acknowledges private sector's role as citizens...that's just a piece of paper.
The National Journal's legal columnist, Stuart Taylor, eviscerates the plaintiff's lawyers in American Isuzu Motors v. Ntsebeza, the class-action lawsuit against corporations that did business with apartheid-era South Africa consistent with U.S. laws and foreign policy. This is the lawsuit that the U.S. Supreme Court could not deal with because it lacked a quorum after justices recused themselves. The entire column, "Lawsuits that Benefit Only Lawyers," is worth reading, but two points grabbed our attention:
The lawsuits will do victims little or no good. The more than 20 million surviving blacks who lived under apartheid are unlikely to get more than a couple of quarters apiece, if anything. The $400 billion claim is frivolous. Even the most fecklessly PC judges are not going to order a vast reparations program for 20 million South Africans at the expense of (mostly) U.S. consumers. And even if Hausfeld and Hoffman succeed in using burdensome court-approved fishing expeditions and inflammatory publicity to extort nuisance settlements of, say, $20 million, that would come to about 50 cents for each "plaintiff," assuming that legal fees and costs consume the usual 30 to 60 percent.
Hausfeld and Hoffman are Michael Hausfeld of Washington, D.C., and Paul Hoffman of Los Angeles, the lawyers who have accused the comapanies of aiding and abetting the South African regime. And...
The money comes from us all. The companies' defense costs and any damage payments would not come from corporate big shots. Rather, in the aggregate such costs are spread to us all in the form of higher prices and insurance premiums; of downward pressure on the stockholdings of the big pension funds and tens of millions individual investors; and of lost jobs, when companies are hit really hard or bankrupted, as more than 60 have been by the asbestos-litigation scam.
The lawsuit represents just self-interested wealth distribution.
WASHINGTON, May 22 --The Alliance for Improving America's Infrastructure today announced the launch of the organization's new website, GetAmericaMoving.com. The site will give concerned citizens across the country the opportunity to share video, pictures and stories of transportation infrastructure problems and traffic congestion in their communities while also offering the ability to recommend real solutions to this growing crisis.
"America's roads, bridges, rail system, airports and waterways are crumbling under their own weight, hurting hard working American families," said the National Association of Manufacturers President John Engler. "The solution is to modernize our aging transportation infrastructure and GetAmericaMoving.com will help the American people communicate their frustrations and solutions to transportation policymakers and decision makers in an innovative and interactive way."
GetAmericaMoving.com features an interactive map of the United States where visitors can upload video and pictures of local transportation infrastructure problems like traffic bottlenecks and roads and bridges desperately in need of repair. Beginning this week, families traveling for the Memorial Day holiday can submit their supporting images using their cell phones or PDA by emailing or texting video and photos to mobile@getamericamoving.com. These transportation problems will be sent to the submitter's Senators and Member of Congress, and to the appropriate committee members in both the Senate and House of Representatives.
Oh, go ahead, take the photo. You're already sitting in traffic. What else is there to do?
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) followed Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) in questioning oil company executives yesterday at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gas prices. Sessions' comments seem directed at Sen. Whitehouse's comments cited below.
Well, this is a free country, and if you want to invest your money in expressing a view on science, you have every right to do so. And I think you have an individual responsibility to make sure it’s done with integrity, because you’re major corporations and you have great responsibilities.
I understand fundamentally that a responsible, large corporation exists to make a profit, but you have a responsibility also to do so in a way that’s consistent with high ethical standards.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) during Wednesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, "Exploring the Skyrocketing Price of Oil." He's addressing five top oil executives:
We are facing a potentially existential threat to the human species. We can warm the planet as much we please with global warming. The planet will be fine. The question is, will the species be fine. And it’s a very, very significant risk. It’s one we absolutely, absolutely have to do something about, in my view.
Also in my view, the science has become extremely clear on this. I’m married to a marine biologist, I understand a little bit of the science. I’ve read into this a great deal. With an astonishing level of scientific agreement about this, considering that science is by its nature an area of debate and exploration and experimentation, but the degree of agreement about it is phenomenal.
And yet there remain fringe views, many of them endorsed, espoused, promulgated by organizations that either are now or have in the past been funded by your companies, with, in my view, the intention of misleading the country about the actual state of the science.
And I would ask that each of you, when you go back from this hearing talk to the folks in your companies and take a look and see if this is still going on. Our regulatory proceedings in this country are riddled with phony science, with propped-up phony organizations that are fronts for industrial interests. It is a real disservice to people in this country that that is going on. And I think when people at your level support that kind of behavior, it’s a terrible mistake, and I ask you to review it and try to put an end to that practice if it still exists in your companies. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Peter J. Robertson of Chevron responded briefly, words to the effect that his company did not engage in that practice. Then J. Stephen Simon, Senior Vice President of Exxon Mobil Corp., took issue with Sen. Whitehouse. The exchange is in the extended entry.
(The passage cited starts at about the 3hr2mn mark of the webcast. An .mp3 is here.)
We noted yesterday the inclusion of Davis-Bacon provisions in the farm bill vetoed by the president, prevailing wage language that forces high-cost unionized labor on a construction project -- your usual one-side-fits all (labor's side) that increases that makes projects more expensive.
Turns out that union-friendly legislators have been adding Davis-Bacon to all sorts of legislation, including H.R. 6049, the Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008, i.e., tax extenders bill that passed the House yesterday.
Finally, the Administration strongly opposes the provision of H.R. 6049 that would apply Davis-Bacon Act prevailing wage requirements to projects financed with the proceeds of the New Clean Renewable Energy Bonds as authorized by the bill. This unacceptable provision is contrary to the Administration's long-standing policy of opposing any statutory attempt to expand or contract the applicability of Davis-Bacon Act prevailing wage requirements. If this provision were included in legislation presented to the President, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.
Looks like it's setting, though. From Congress Daily, a generally skeptical piece about the benefits of the Doha round.
Prospects for a successful conclusion of the Doha Round of multilateral trade talks continue to dwindle. New negotiating texts in agriculture and manufacturing have just been released, but are far from being agreed upon. As a result, a meeting of trade ministers to bless a formula for cutting tariffs will not take place before late June or might slip further.
The new text is disappointing and is a step backward from the trade liberalization the world needs. Manufactured goods are 60 percent of world trade, services 20 percent, and agriculture only 7 percent (oil and raw materials are the rest). There cannot be a Doha Round without substantial trade liberalization in manufacturing and services, and the new text makes that liberalization more difficult than before.
High-tariff advanced developing nations such as China, India, and Brazil, have pressed hard to get a text aimed at obtaining major concessions from the United States and other industrial nations, while minimizing their own market openings. These countries, though, are the ones with the highest barriers to exports from the poorest countries. Unless they cut their barriers, the Doha Round can contribute little to global trade and development.
The 2008 National Summit on American Competitiveness will convene the nation's premier leaders of business, government and academia on what steps the public and private sectors can take to secure America's position as the most competitive economy in the 21st century and beyond.
AP story here. You can log onto the summit's webcast here.
National Association of Manufacturers President John Engler is moderating a panel discussion entitled, "Utilizing Free Trade Agreements." An impressive group of panelists: Rick Goings, Chairman and CEO, Tupperware Brands Corporation; Robert Lane, Chairman and CEO, Deere & Company; Jim Owens, Chairman and CEO, Caterpillar; and Matthew Slaughter, Professor of International Economics, Tuck School, Dartmouth. That's 1:30 p.m. Chicago time.
The NAM sent a letter to the House expressing support for many provisions of H.R. 6049, the Energy and Tax Extenders Act of 2008:
On behalf of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)—the nation’s largest industrial trade association—we appreciate the efforts of the House of Representatives to advance the Energy and Tax Extenders Act of 2008 (H.R. 6049), which extends a number of pro-growth, pro-competitiveness tax provisions that have expired or are set to expire at the end of 2008.
In particular, the NAM supports the following provisions in the bill:
• A seamless extension of the R&D credit;
• An extension of deferral of U.S. tax on active business global financing income;
• An extension of the look-through rules for payments between related foreign corporations; and
• Extensions of tax incentives for energy efficiency and renewable energy.
The White House has issued a Statement of Administration Policy expressing support for provisions, as well, including the R&D tax credit. However, the Administration finds enough objectionable that a veto is promised.
House Republicans today released their multipart plan to promote energy security and more affordable energy. Minority Leader Boehner:
Our plan is comprehensive, but our pledge is straightforward. We will increase the production of American-made energy in an environmentally-safe way. We will promote new, clean, and reliable sources of energy. We will cut red tape and increase the supply of American-made fuel and energy. And we will encourage greater energy efficiency by offering conservation tax incentives. By increasing energy supplies and encouraging more efficiency, House Republicans are prepared to deliver the change – and lower gas prices – America deserves.
The GOP plan was particularly focused on increasing domestic production, an idea Democrats have been cool to due to environmental concerns and a desire to focus on alternative energy sources rather than domestic drilling.
The Republican agenda also called for conservation tax credits, the increased use of nuclear power, an emphasis on coal to liquid technologies and for construction of new oil refineries.
On the production issue, Republicans called for increased drilling in the outer continental shelf, tapping into domestic oil share reserves and once again calling for drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, which has been a flashpoint in the energy debate going back to the early 1990s.
"It defies reality that China is drilling for oil off the coast of Cuba, but we cannot drill off of our own shores," said Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.).
UPDATE (4:50 p.m.) : House Democrats today released a page of talking points highlighting their record "to make Americ energy independent, lower gas prices."
Cited as an accomplishment is the House passage today of H.R. 6049, the Renewable Energy and Jobs Creation Act. We think of it more as the "tax extenders" legislation, i.e., extending tax incentives, including many for renewable energy.
Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) today urged President George W. Bush to keep his promise to veto the Farm, Nutrition and Bioenergy Act of 2007 (H.R. 2419) over the expansion of the Davis-Bacon Act, among other issues. The legislation would expand Davis-Bacon from federal construction contracts to the bio-refinery loan guarantee program and subject local entities and private employers to federal micromanagement.
“The Davis-Bacon provision in the Farm Bill is a desperate attempt by Congress to keep alive a Depression-era law that has no place in the 21st century,” said ABC President and CEO Kirk Pickerel. “Besides being discriminatory towards minority contractors; open to waste, fraud and abuse; and violating state’s rights; it unnecessarily drives up the cost of a construction project that ultimately has to be paid by the taxpayer.”
The Davis-Bacon Act is a 1931 federal law that establishes wage rates and other conditions on construction projects involving more than $2,000 in federal funds. The law is named after co-authors Sen. James Davis and Rep. Robert Bacon.
“Eliminating the Davis-Bacon Act’s requirements would reduce unnecessary federal spending and guarantee more construction for the dollar,” said Pickerel. “In turn, more money would be available for important public projects such as schools, hospitals, roads, bridges and low-income housing.”
More from ABC here, including reference to the CBO estimate that the Davis-Bacon Act “already costs taxpayers more than $9.5 billion over the 2002 to 2011 period relative to the 2001 appropriations and $10.5 billion relative to 2001 appropriations adjusted for inflation. A more recent estimate, from the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University in January, suggests Davis-Bacon costs taxpayers $8.6 billion per year.”
For all the commentary, exhortations and denunciations involving the Employee Free Choice Act, the "card-check" legislation that would eliminate the secret ballot in the workplace, we doubt the broad public is aware of the issue. To be sure, it's a regular topic in the labor/activist/left wing blosophere and press, and Democratic superdelegates and unions cite the legislation when endorsing candidates. Meanwhile, some free-market and pro-business bloggers write about it...a lot.
But it seems like the issue is starting to gain a little bit more notice. US News columnist Matt Bandyk just wrote about card check, soliciting input from small business owners on the effects of forced unionization -- our term -- on the workplaces. His piece was prompted by a news release from the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, the free-enterprise group, which announced it would include state card-check measures in judging a state's business environment.
Also, John Lott Jr. -- an economist known widely for his statistical work on crime and gun ownership -- had a column published at the Fox News website, "Secret Ballots May End in Union Elections If Obama Becomes President." A statement of the obvious to those who follow the issue -- Senator Obama is a cosponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act -- but the Lott column represents a good introduction to the issue for a mass audience.
Why have unions placed this at the top of their legislative agenda? Changing the rules would only make a difference if workers were unwilling to vote in private for unionization, but apparently there are a lot of companies where unions think that this change will make a difference. After all, the AFL-CIO calls the “Employee Free Choice Act” its “million-member mobilization.”
Unions are making an all-out push to get this passed, planning to spend $360 million on the 2008 election, $200 million more than in 2004 general election. Just one union alone, the Service Employees International Union, plans on spending $75 million this year, much of it to help the Democratic presidential nominee. Compare that to the $83 million that John McCain will be able to spend during the fall general election.
Ultimately, as Lott's column demonstrates, it will probably take the fall election and the willingness of candidates to campaign on card check for the issue to impinge on the public's consciousness. Despite all the union spending, opposition to this profoundly anti-democratic measure is a political winner. As public opinion surveys in key Senate races (Oregon, Maine and Minnesota) show, support for the Employee Free Choice Act drives potential voters away from candidates.
P.S. This is callous. Columnist Jo-Ann Mort at the Democratic-supporting Talking Points Memo blog suggests that Sen. Hillary Clinton assume Sen. Ted Kennedy's role as the labor's leading Senate advocate, helping a new President Obama enact the Employee Free Choice Act.
MS. PERINO: Farm bill, on the timetable for the President -- we do expect the President will veto it at some point today, so let the phone calls to my office begin: "Has he done it yet? Has he done it yet?"
This bill is bloated. It is bad for American taxpayers. And when grocery bills are on the rise, Congress is asking families to pay more in subsidies to wealthy farmers, at a time of record farm profits. We believe that the fact that they wanted to spend more than $20 billion over the current baseline is way too much to ask from taxpayers right now. We think that they hid new spending with timing shifts. There's a report today that one of the provisions in the bill actually would provide even more subsidies to farmers.
And so the President has been clear all along on this bill. We worked hard to try to get to a place where we could sign a farm bill. We were very clear with what our provisions would be, and at the end of the day Congress decided to go in another direction.
In his conversation yesterday with bloggers (cited below), Chevron Vice Chairman Peter Robertson mentioned the difficulty the company was having in getting permits for a refinery upgrade in California. He was referring to the Richmond Refinery in the San Francisco Bay area. More Robertson (our transcription):
It’s not an enormous modification. We have a modification to that refinery that’s actually going to reduce the C02 emissions. It’s going to allow us to run a broader range of crudes, so it should reduce costs to the refinery and eventually reduce gasoline prices. But, we can’t get a permit to expand the darn thing, and as I say, we’re into the fourth year of trying to do that. And it’s not because we’re obstinate. It’s just because there’s lots of folks with a lot of interests that aren’t aligned with ours.
He added that the American public and gasoline users might have some interests of their own.
As for the Reliance Energy refinery being built in India, it's a greenfield refinery, i.e., one being built from the ground up rather than the expansion-on-current-site approach that has ruled in the United States for the last three decades or so (because of regulations, NIMBY opposition and the generally low margins on the refinery business). Here's an update on the Indian project from Reuters:
News of the start-up is in line with previous reports suggesting Reliance would start the plant late in the second quarter or early in the third quarter, well ahead of its official December target, bringing earlier relief to oil markets that continue to rally on fears of tight supplies.
Together with Reliance's existing 660,000-bpd refinery, the new unit will make the Jamnagar complex in western Gujarat state, the world's biggest with a capacity of 1.24 million bpd. Chevron Corp holds a 5 percent stake in the unit that is building the second plant, Reliance Petroleum.
Regions that produce energy and other commodities are enjoying higher employment and faster-rising incomes. In North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Oklahoma and Texas, personal income, which includes income from wages and investments, grew between 6.4% and 7.4% in the fourth quarter of last year from the year before, before adjusting for inflation. Incomes in the country as a whole grew 5.9%.
Most states with thriving economies didn't have a sharp run-up in housing prices and so have avoided precipitous declines. Now, as high energy prices spur production from oil and natural-gas wells once too costly to be profitable in Texas and other states, there is strong demand for new workers -- and for hotels and restaurants to accommodate them. Newcomers flocking to jobs in labor-short markets help buoy housing markets.
National Association of Manufacturers President John Engler highlighted two challenges for industry last evening evening in his remarks to the Manufacturers’ Association of Central Pennsylvania in Williamsport: workforce and energy. From the Sun-Gazette:
“Work force is the top priority for our organization,” Engler said.
He said the baby boomers are retiring and taking 30 years of experience with them, and when those people retire, training new employee becomes very important.
“We want manufacturing to be appealing,” Engler said.
It is important to reach out to young people and to high school counselors and let them know the opportunities that are available in the manufacturing sector, he said.
The local association has started an annual awards program and honored last night were Cromaglass, PMF Industries and Woolrich -- small, medium and large manufacturing businesses of the year. Congratulations to all and our best to Cromaglass, a manufacturer of waste-water treatment systems and an NAM member company.
And speaking of cool, check out PMF Industries, a high-tech metals fabrication and forming company: "No other company can combine flowforming with more state-of-the-art processes, in-house manufacturing, design flexibility, and overall project control than PMF. It's what we call FlowformingPlus!"
The Senate Judiciary Committee has joined the angry array of congressional panels holding hearings into the oil prices and today's announced $130 a barrel price will no doubt goose the rhetoric of this morning's session, "Exploring the Skyrocketing Price of Oil."
Peter J. Robertson, vice chairman of Chevron, spoke to energy bloggers yesterday afternoon about some of the topics he expects to encounter today. The primary cause of high gas prices is high crude oil prices, he said, noting that the refining business has been very constrained.
And what would the effect of higher taxes on the energy producers be, we asked. Robertson responded by citing the axiom, if you tax something, you get less of it.
Chevron has invested all of its earnings. In the last six years after we formed this new company after the merger with Texaco, we’ve earned $72 billion after tax, and we’ve invested $73 billion. So we’ve invested all of our earnings.
And I would just say, I can’t point to any specific project which wouldn’t get done, it seems to me like you probably end up reducing our investment. Certainly, in a big chunk, taxing our earnings reduces investment, and reduces production, reduces supply – and if you reduce supply, prices go up. And it seems like it’s the wrong approach...
We’re not out there looking for subsidies. What we need is the reduction of barriers to investment. I mean, there are a bunch of barriers of investment to the United States: Eighty-five percent of the offshore is off-limits. I’m now four years into trying to get a permit to expand the refinery in California. Four years! (Or, we’re into our fourth year, so I guess it’s three or three point.something years.) In that same time Reliance Energy in India has built a 600,000 barrel a day refinery from scratch, and they’re about to start it up.
There are barriers all over the place to investment, and what these guys it seems to me ought to be working on is allowing us to invest more of our money in the United States and less about taxing it away.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Conservation groups returned to court to challenge Bush administration efforts to help save the polar bear, saying federal officials' refusal to include steps against global warming violates the Endangered Species Act.
In court documents filed late Friday, the Center for Biological Diversity and other groups asked a federal judge to reject Interior Department actions that were announced last week.
Reminder for the weekend: Rent Wernzer Herzog's "Grizzly Man."
A study paid for by a group that represents oil refiners found that the global warming bill, co-authored by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.), would raise pump prices by around 48 cents (in 2007 currency) by 2030. It also found that the bill would increase gas prices by as much as 13 cents over the next four years....[snip]For refiners, the bill would act like a tax on carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas released when fossil fuels are burned. The total price hit would reach 60 cents, the study predicts.
About 80 percent of that would be passed on to consumers.
The report was performed by NERA Economic Consulting , a group that has helped craft a cap-and-trade system in Europe, and underwritten by the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association (NPRA) , a group that has called efforts in the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 'premature.'"
NEW YORK (Reuters) - William Lerach, a prominent U.S. class-action lawyer, reported to a low-security prison in California on Monday to begin serving a two-year term after admitting he participated in an illegal kickbacks scheme at his former law firm....[snip]Lerach was ordered to serve two years in prison by a federal judge in Los Angeles in February. He also agreed to forfeit $7.75 million and pay a $250,000 fine as part of a plea agreement.
Lerach admitted he played a role in a scheme to seek out clients with big stock portfolios, ask them to be plaintiffs when negative information surfaced about a company and then secretly pay them a portion of the legal fees the firm received.
WASHINGTON—With one of the country’s former leading class-action litigators, Bill Lerach, reporting to federal prison this afternoon for participating in a $250 million illegal kickback scheme, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced today that he is introducing new legislation to address what many believe to be a widespread criminal practice in the area of securities class action law.
“As recent events have shown, current securities litigation laws have been subject to abuse, and there is reason to believe this criminal activity may not be limited to just a few bad actors,” Sen. Cornyn, a leading advocate of lawsuit abuse reform, said today. “It is important that corporations be held accountable through securities fraud litigation when they cheat ordinary shareholders out of their hard-earned money. But it is equally important that attorneys be held accountable when they do the same thing. The recent securities litigation kickback scandals ought to spur Congress to action.”
On Trade, The Rest of The World Isn't Sitting Still
May 20, 2008
"Andean Community, EU Agree on `Flexible' Trade Talks": "May 17 (Bloomberg) -- The Andean Community and the European Union agreed to more ``flexible'' negotiations for a free trade agreement, Peruvian President Alan Garcia said today. The leaders of Andean trade bloc members Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru met with EU officials today in Lima to speed up talks for an accord, Garcia told reporters."
"The Democrats' Dangerous Trade Games," a WSJ op-ed by C. Fred Bergsten of Peterson Institute for International Economics: "The European Union, and the large and dynamic economies of Asia, will now strike trade compacts among themselves that discriminate against the U.S. rather than do deals with us. Examples will likely include EU-India and EU-Korea, and eventually an Asia-wide trade area. We will lose billions of dollars worth of exports and the associated high-paying jobs – just at a time when improvements in our trade balance, fortified by continuing growth abroad and a highly competitive dollar, are cushioning our slowdown. The multilateral trade system, including the highly effective dispute settlement mechanism in the World Trade Organization, will erode further and weaken our ability to tear down barriers in China, India and other large emerging markets."
"Quebec would welcome plumbers, Charest says": "Mr. Charest also sought to persuade the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry to lobby for a free-trade agreement between the European Union and Canada. France takes over the rotating presidency of the EU in July...."The United States is going through an economic slowdown," he said. "So we really have to make an effort to develop economic relations with Europe.""
National Association of Manufacturers President John Engler is headed to U.S. energy hot post today to speak to the Manufacturers' Association of Central Pennsylvania at the group's annual meeting in Williamsport.
There's an intense interest and negotiating over what appears to be the next big natural gas play in the United States, the Marcellus Shale. From USA Today:
Geologists and energy companies have known for decades about the gas in the Marcellus Shale, but only recently have figured out a possible — though expensive — way to extract it from the thick black rock about 6,000 feet underground.
Like prospectors mining for gold, energy executives must decide whether the prize is worth the huge investment.
"This is a very real prospect, very real," said Stephen Rhoads, president of the Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Association. "This could be a very significant year for this."
Judging by the stories in the local paper, The Sun-Gazette, the decision has been reached.
According to a Penn State extension specialist quoted in the last story, the energy industry intends to spend $1 billion this year in the Appalachian Basin, and local per acre lease rates have jumped from $15 to $300 to $1,500. And a landower from make upwards of $800,000 a year with a producing well in his property.
Interest is especially high because the Marcellus formation closely resembles the Barnett Shale formation in Texas, now the biggest natural gas play in the country, but the gas is closer to the East Coast markets. Technological advances in the form of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fractionation have made energy accessible at a high, but still profitable cost. (The same technology is at use the Bakken oil formation in the northern Great Plains.)
As the USA Today story notes, expensive. Thank goodness for energy company profits.
The boss makes a point, too, about accessing the natural gas: It's a good thing this round of energy development doesn't have to go to Congress for approval. They'd probably vote no.
Canadian Superior Energy Inc. or an affiliate plans to announce Monday that it will apply for permission to build a liquefied natural gas terminal off the coast of New Jersey.
The possibility of building offshore LNG terminals off Sandy Hook and other New Jersey locations has already sparked protests from activists like Clean Ocean Action and politicians like Rep. Frank J. Pallone Jr., a New Jersey Democrat, who argue that LNG facilities harm the environment. Also reportedly exploring such terminals are ExxonMobil Corp. and Atlantic Sea Island Group.
Isn't natural gas supposed to be the low-carbon, "clean" energy source? Why would any group oppose additional LNG facilities unless they were opposed to the manufacturing sector, well-heated homes and prosperity in general?
Rhetorical questions aside, here's a recent column by Carl Gustin, president of the New England Energy Alliance, on how Connecticut is acting its own interest in opposing LNG terminals to supply needed energy. Gustin examines the opposition to Broadwater, a joint venture of Shell Oil and TransCanada, and Islander East Pipeline, a joint venture between KeySpan, now National Grid, and Spectra Energy. Both have gone through the required regulatory reviews, addressed the public's concerns (and those of critics) and still meet opposition.
These examples exemplify the contradictory nature of energy policy — use more natural gas, but don't increase supply. Unfortunately, opposition to large-scale projects designed to provide a fuel source that public policy encourages puts the region at risk of not having enough reliable and affordable energy. It discourages investors, undermines economic development, and puts our citizens and businesses at an economic disadvantage. And it's not limited to natural gas policy.
Wind development in New England faces the same challenges, with policies that encourage its use followed by actions that discourage project development. New England would benefit if the states would adopt energy plans that send consistent messages — messages that align goals, policies and actions.
Interesting profile in the Courier-Post of the new head of the incoming head of the American Trial Lawyers Association-New Jersey, Tommie Ann Gibney. She's a member of the Haddonfield, N.J., firm of Andres & Berger. She specializes in suing nursing homes, and wants to expand potential compensation in wrongful death suits.
The most specific goal for the organization this year is to amend the state's wrongful death statute. Currently, survivors in a wrongful death action can seek damages only for lost income. There is no monetary value put on what Gibney calls "the reality of what a family is in the 21st century.
Many families today include older members, like grandparents, who provide care services for children. Others have stay-at-home parents, yet survivors in a wrongful death lawsuit cannot seek a judgment to compensate for the loss, through negligence or violence, of those care-givers.
And Walter Olson's Overlawyered.com has a new look, a new platform, and the same legal excesses and outrages piling up daily. Do be so kind as to check it out.
BOGOTA, Colombia ( — A wanted leader of Latin America's largest guerrilla army handed herself over to Colombian authorities on Sunday, Colombia's defense minister said.
Eldaneyis Mosquera, also known as "Karina," was one of the most senior women in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. She operated in the country's mountainous, northwestern region, where security officials blamed her for a series of attacks and kidnappings.
When Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne announced the listing, he also made a bold statement that the new status of the polar bear would not lead to such consequences.
To which the environmental activists replied immediately: "Says who?" The law is the law, they correctly noted, and it cannot be cabined by "guidance" issued by the executive branch. Here's one example of the reality of the listing's aftermath from the pages of USA Today:
Kassie Siegel, a lawyer with the Center for Biological Diversity, said the group does not accept Kempthorne's view.
The act requires federal agencies to take steps to reduce or eliminate those impacts on threatened species, she said. "There is no exemption for greenhouse gas emissions."
If the government fails to address global warming, "we can and will go to court to enforce the law," she said.
The industries most likely to be pummeled by the polar bear are energy production, aggregates extraction, transportation, and commercial building because each can be shown quite easily to result in increased emissions of greenhouse gases and each routinely requires federal permits to go about some aspect of their business. (The coal industry may be target number one, followed by oil drilling in the lower 48.)
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European and U.S. businesses warned on Friday that the chances of clinching a long-elusive world trade deal will be undermined if more concessions are offered to China, India and other big developing nations.
The World Trade Organisation's Doha negotiations for freer trade around the planet, launched more than six years ago, face a possibly decisive next few weeks.
WTO mediators are due to publish proposals in coming days on how to bridge big differences on farm and industrial goods, which they hope will pave the way for a push by ministers for a breakthrough in June or July.
The National Association of Manufacturers and Business Europe sent a letter to Pascal Lamy, head of the WTO, urging negotiators "to maintain a strong sense of market access ambition".
From an interview in the May issue of Mojo, the best rock music magazine out there.
I'm currently really involved in finding a fuel source. That's something that is fascinating to me. I really think that the key to making the biggest contribution possible to the world is not a song. I think it's a fuel source. If the people who had their own fuel and anybody could get anywhere, that would be fantastic. It would cause turmoil in the economic balance for the world for a number of years, but ...something that would clean up the environment, something that would end this struggle for survival with fuel. It's all based around fuel. And if you took that away, it would be a massive change. It would be like the fuel or the internet. So that's the challenge for our generation.
How about we start the week with a plug for the 2008 National Summit on American Competitiveness on Thursday in Chicago? Organized by the Department of Commerce, the summit brings manufacturing leaders, policy thinkers and public officials, focusing attention on what's needed to keep the U.S. economy competive. NAM President John Engler moderates a panel on trade agreements, and Secretaries Gutierrez and Paulson speak.
Here in Washington, heavy action pending the one-week Memorial Day recess, with numerous committees getting their pound of oil. (If you drill, do we not produce?) The House convenes at 10:30 a.m. today, with major items on the week's schedule including H.R. 5658, the defense authorization act, and H.R. 6049, the renewable energy and tax extenders legislation. (It includes tax breaks for renewable energy, the R&D tax credit, and the federal deduction for state and local taxes.)
The Majority Leader's office has posted the floor schedule. And today, many, many, many special days declared.
The Senate convenes at 2 p.m. today and could soon take up H.R. 2642, the supplemental appropriation bill, which includes funding for the Iraq war. The Senate could act on the mandatory collective bargaining for firefighters and police officers, a priority for organized labor. Both the Senate and House could take up the president's expected veto of the farm bill.
For a full listing of this week's committee hearings, see theDaily Digest pages.
Back in 1954, Ray Kroc was a 52 year old milkshake machine salesman on his way to visit clients in San Bernardino, about 55 miles east of Los Angeles, where he experienced what can only be termed a true creative vision.
His clients were a couple of guys named McDonald who operated a squeaky clean restaurant churning out hamburgers, fries, shakes – nine menu items in all – for rock bottom prices. Kroc saw the future then and there. “I felt like some latter day Newton who’d just had an Idaho potato caromed off his skull,” he said later.
He talked the McDonalds brothers into letting him franchise their concept, though they were highly skeptical. He set out to replicate their restaurant and its products carefully, making sure every franchise was just like every other franchise.
But it didn’t come easy. Kroc’s original franchise plan made money for the franchises, but very little for Kroc. He resolved his dilemma by going into real estate – buying or leasing store sites and then subleasing them to franchisees at inflated prices. By controlling the leases, he also controlled his managers and their products. He was able to set up a nationwide hamburger assembly line.
In 1984, Ray Kroc died at 81, just a few months before McDonald’s sold its 50 billionth hamburger. A year later, when the value of McDonalds $4 billion real estate portfolio passed Sears, the New York Stock Exchange added McDonalds to the Dow.
As we've noted previously here and here and here, media coverage of the debate over a federal media shield invariably depicts a battle between two forces: Journalists fighting to protect their sources and the free flow of information versus the Administration, warning against a law that will encourage leaks of national security and classified intelligence information.
But business, too, has a major stake in this legislation, which could shield crimes committed against companies, their executives and employees.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson raised one aspect of this illicit information spreading in a letter last month to Congress, noting the possible damage done to the CFIUS program -- the national security reviews involved in major foreign investments in U.S.-based corporations. (CFIUS = Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a multiagency review panel.)
CFIUS review depends heavily on the voluntary submission of substantial information by the parties pertaining to their transaction. Regulations require that parties submitting a notice to CFIUS provide detailed information (personal and proprietary) about themselves and the transaction, including their businesses' structures, commercial relationships and affiliations, transactional documents, market share and business plans. In recognition of the sensitivity of this information, section 721 prohibits public disclosure of such documents or information, except in the case of an administrative or judicial action or proceeding, and further exempts such documents and information from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.
In recent years, there have been several instances in which pending transactions and their related details have been leaked to and reported by the press. Unlawful media disclosure of information provided to CFIUS risks fundamentally undermining the critical national security review process. Companies could become reluctant to submit their transactions for review. Those that do file may become less forthcoming in the information they provide to CFIUS. Media leaks also undermine the integrity of the interagency deliberative process, chilling the full and open discussion that is essential to CFIUS's decision making.
Breaches of confidentiality could also chill foreign investment. Firms otherwise willing to invest in the United States may become less inclined to do so if submitting to a national security review process risks public exposure of sensitive personal, proprietary, and business information. Also, repeated leaks may make other countries less inclined to provide robust protections for confidential information provided by U.S. companies, putting U.S. companies with international operations at a competitive disadvantage to local companies.
Nissley Winery - We travel to Nissley Vineyards & Winery Estate in Bainbridge, Pennsylvania, for this week's "Cool Stuff Being Made," where winemaker Bill Gulvin gives us a tour of the process -- from vinyard to bottle.
Rice hulls? Nitrogen? Argon via the sparger? Sure...all part of making wine.
CQ Politics reports on the NAM's objections to raising taxes on Chapter S Corporations to finance veterans education benefits, an amendment in the supplemental appropriations measure to fund the war in Iraq.
Higher taxes on manufacturers means there will be less money for business expansion and job creation, including for returning veterans, according to NAM.
In an interview, Dena Battle, NAM's director of tax policy, said today the group was disappointed that it passed. "We are very hopeful that this will be stopped in the Senate," she added. Battle pointed out that small businesses, such as S-corporations or limited liability companies, pay taxes at the individual rate. "So any time Congress does something to increase tax rate or place surtax on individual incomes, then it hurts those businesses," she said. "One thing that is unique to many small businesses is that it is all of their business income that is treated on their personal tax return, so you could have a very high number, but most of that amount is reinvested into the business and not profit going to the individual," she added.
This week's video podcast of "America's Business" features an interview with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) on the important topic of infrastructure. Wyden and Sen. John Thune (R-SD) are cosponsoring legislation to create Build America Bonds to finance infrastructure projects. Wyden:
It’s very clear to me that our country has underinvested in infrastructure. The bridges are in desperate need of repair. Ports and rail lines are or are near capacity. Highways are clogged and Americans are in traffic jams in places nobody could have dreamed a traffic jam would take place. And this is taking enormous economic toll. If you have to wait, for example, for hours and hours to move your goods and services through a particular community that’s going to make us less competitive.
For more of Sen. Wyden's interview with host Mike Hambrick and to listen to the full program, please go to www.AmericasBusiness.org.
Many of America’s roads and bridges are in bad shape, putting a strain on economic growth. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is pushing Congress to approve “Build America Bonds” to help fix the nation’s ailing infrastructure.
Wyden, a guest on this week’s “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick,” praised the National Association of Manufacturers for raising public and political awareness about America’s infrastructure needs. Wyden is a member of the NAM’s Alliance to Improve America’s Infrastructure.
“It seems to me the alliance has helped us get more and more support every time out,” Wyden says.
Ferrer’s group brings Brazilians to the United States to learn about our business and economic system. And Sullivan’s organization helps strengthen democracy abroad through private enterprise and market-oriented reform.
Move over Ford and General Motors – there’s a new car manufacturer in America that makes vehicles specifically for law enforcement and homeland security. Carbon Motors Corp. Chief Executive Officer Bill Li will join Mike to tell us more about his company.
You can also tune in to get a sneak preview of the second annual National Summit on American Competitiveness in Chicago from event operations director Kelly O’Brien. And Nancy Hickey, senior vice president at the Steelcase office furniture maker, will talk about how that company is harnessing energy from wind.
In our regular segments, Renee Giachino of American Justice Partnership will give us the latest on tort reform and commentator Hank Cox recalls the “The Way It Was.” And the National Association of Manufacturers President Gov. John Engler will close the program with “The Last Word.”
For more about “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick” and to listen to the program online, please click here. And for video highlights and more, check out www.americasbusiness.org.
This is disconcerting, the prospect of adding even more political gamesplaying with consideration of FISA legislation, the bill to provide the Administration effective authority to monitor foreign communications by our enemies. The Senate handily passed S. 2248, including the necessary retroactive immunity for telecom companies, but House action was blocked by obeisance to the powerful "netroots," civil-liberty absolutist and trial lawyer constituencies.
Now Jed Babbin, editor of Human Events, writes about a scenario to put more pressure on House Speaker Pelosi by combining a federal media shield bill with the Senate FISA bill. The stakes for national security are high, because some existing surveillance authorities expire in August. From "New FISA Strategy May Pry Bill from Speaker’s Grasp":
[There] are two ways for the House to pass the essential FISA legislation before the August expiration of existing FISA court orders blinds our signals intelligence gatherers altogether. First -- and best -- is for the discharge petition to obtain the needed 218 signatures to force the bill to a vote. Second -- and perhaps more likely -- is for House Republicans to combine the Senate FISA bill with an improved version of the Pence-Boucher bill and obtain Pelosi’s agreement to take the bill to the floor.
These are dangerous waters. Enactment of the Senate FISA legislation is an immediate national security need. A media shield --though a properly-crafted one would help insure freedom of the press -- is not. To compromise one for the sake of the other could imperil both.
Agreed. And for a good view of how these "netroots" -- angry, leftie activists -- see the issues of national security, take a look at this post by mcjoan at DailyKos. Signing a discharge petition is "traitorous," and some of the "Blue Dog" Democrats have tried to "sell us out." How dare they even consider protecting Americans from being blown up by terrorists.
For previous posts on the FISA legislation, click here.
The state of Rhode Island's lawsuit against lead-paint manufacturers is all about finding somebody in the private sector to pick up the costs for an unnecessary $2.4 billion clean-up plan, even though there's no specific connection to the companies. Perhaps their blame emanates from the penumbras given off by a house painted ....in 1938...in Ohio.
At any case, attorneys for the companies presented compelling arguments yesterday in the four-hour hearing held by the Rhode Island Supreme Court of their appeal of a jury verdict in the public nuisance suit brought by the state. From the AP:
The state never proved the toxic products produced by the companies ended up in the homes of Rhode Islanders, argued lawyers for Sherwin-Williams Co., NL Industries Inc. and Millennium Holdings LLC. The companies are appealing a 2006 verdict that found them liable in the first-ever jury ruling against the industry...[snip]
Industry lawyers told the state Supreme Court they were being held responsible for a product that was pulled off the market decades ago, and that state law already holds landlords and homeowners responsible for cleaning up lead paint. They said the state was allowed to argue the overall presence of lead paint in homes creates a public nuisance without identifying any of the company's products in particular homes.
"That one concept is responsible for getting the train off the track in many respects," said William Kayatta, a lawyer for Millennium Holdings. "Because once you accept that, you're not dealing with reality."
And again, we highly recommend Jane Genova at Law & More for her continuing coverage. This post was especially good:
I thought I was hearing wrong when one the of Justices cut Motley Rice attorney Fidelma Fitzpatrick short when she was starting her usual rant about lead paint is bad. I looked over to the man sitting next to me. He was bug-eyed. So, we both hadn't heard wrong. it was going to get a lot more intense.
The smart four men they are - one justice recused - they were going to find a narrow passageway through the public nuisance and contingency messes through questions of law. That's what they wanted. The attorneys representing the defendants Sherwin-Williams, Millennium Holdings and NL Industries and acquitted Atlantic Richfield stuck to the points of law. The plaintiff representatives did not. They came prepared with stylized rhetoric and kept to the script.
Motley Rice is the law firm the state hired on a contingency basis. And from the portions of the hearing we watched, Genova's summary is right on the mark. See for yourself: The Supreme Court web-archived the hearing, which you can watch it here.
Amid all the exchanges of outrage in the House yesterday over funding of troops in Iraq, we highlight one bad idea that did pass: A targeted tax increase on small businesses and employers to pay for veterans education benefits.
Specifically, by a vote of 256-166, the House approved an amendment to the supplemental appropriations bill that would impose a new .47% tax on S-corporations and other individuals with more than $500,000 in adjusted gross income in order to fund expanded education benefits to veterans.
Here's how The New York Times described the vote: "House Approves Tax on Rich to Aid G.I.’s" If by rich, you mean small-business owners who file as an S-corp, that's accurate.
The NAM strongly supports efforts to honor the veterans of our nation and to provide them with education benefits. However, we believe that the amendment’s expanded benefits should not be paid for by the small businesses most responsible for creating jobs and growing the economy. To raise taxes that would harm the economy means fewer jobs for returning veterans.
Twenty-seven million small businesses – including about 50 percent of the NAM’s members – operate as S-corporations or other “flow through” entities. They pay taxes at the individual rate and would thus be subject to the tax increase the amendment would impose. Levying a .47 percent additional tax on individual incomes over $500,000 would have a negative impact on these companies. Higher taxes on manufacturers, especially at a time when the economy is contracting, means there will be less money for business expansion and job creation.
Used to be that politicians dared only talk of funding new government spending by "repealing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy." Now it's taxing the wealthy. What's the next shift going to be?
The Senate Appropriations Committee today narrowly defeated Sen. Wayne Allard's attempt to end a moratorium related to oil shale development in Colorado....[snip]The moratorium prevents the Department of Interior from issuing regulations so that oil companies can move forward on oil-shale projects in Colorado and Utah. Allard said the moratorium has left uncertainties at a time when companies need to move forward and in the long term make the United States more energy independent.
"If we are really serious about reducing pain at the pump, this is a vote that would make a difference in people's lives," Allard argued.
The vote was 14-15, partyline, with Democrats voting no. Meanwhile, from Bloomberg:
May 15 (Bloomberg) -- Petroleo Brasileiro SA, Brazil's state-controlled oil company, leased about 80 percent of the world's deepest-drilling offshore rigs to explore prospects including the Western Hemisphere's biggest discovery in decades.
Petrobras, as the Rio de Janeiro-based company is known, is hiring rigs that can drill in at least 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) of water, Chief Executive Officer Jose Sergio Gabrielli said in an interview last week. The world has 21 such vessels, according to Rigzone.com, which tracks the offshore drilling industry.
Brazil, now there's a country that's serious about energy security, and it's not all ethanol.
NEWS ALERT
from The Wall Street Journal
May 16, 2008
Home construction turned up unexpectedly in April and showed surprising vigor, making the biggest increase in two years, while building permits also rose, a sign of optimism for the sickly housing sector. Housing starts increased 8.2% to a seasonally adjusted 1.032 million annual rate, driven higher by a surge in apartment building construction, the Commerce Department said. Starts plunged by a revised 13.8% in March to 954,000. Economists expected April starts to drop by 1.4% to a 934,000-unit annual rate.
Remember how former Labor Secretary Robert Reich misrepresented a meeting he had at the National Association of Manufacturers, describing it as a room full of cigar-chomping industrialists who hissed him loudly?
His speech over, Reich is lambasted by a "John," and Reich's answer elicits an eruption of "Wrong!" "B*******!" and "Go back to Harvard!" As Reich speaks, the audience hisses so loudly "that I'm not sure anyone can hear me." The cigar smoke, he says, "is making my eyes water. I feel dizzy." He says, "We're in a boxing arena, John's the champ, and the crowd is loving every minute." Finally, the meeting over, he races "out the back exit before they can pummel me."
As it happens, the meeting was a breakfast, not a lunch. The NAM says the attendance list shows that a third or more of the people present were women (including the NAM representative with whom I spoke). If anyone actually was inclined to light up a cigar after breakfast, he would have been breaking the NAM's no-smoking rule, according to an association representative (who, like another witness I talked to, saw no cigars). Most important, a transcript of the meeting shows a respectful Q and A session, in which none of the comments attributed to "John"--nor any like them--were actually made.
We were reminded of Reich's fabulism by an entry at the Los Angeles Times blog on differing accounts of a meeting Sen. Barack Obama had with automotive executives in Detroit.
Sen. Barack Obama, the leading Democratic candidate for his party's nomination, is very fond of telling receptive audiences the story about how last May he walked right into the automotive lion's den of Detroit and told those industrialists they were going to have to shape up, change the way they do things and start making more fuel-efficient vehicles to protect our environment.
"And I have to say," the straight-talking Obama tells his chuckling followers, "that when I delivered that speech, the room got really quiet. [Laughter] Nobody clapped."
Well, in honor of Obama's return campaign visit back to Michigan this week, someone -- perhaps Republicans, perhaps someone closer to home politically -- assembled videotape of Obama's oft-told tale and spliced it side by side with videotape of that actual Detroit speech.
You'll never guess what. The room wasn't quiet at all. Obama, in fact, got a loud round of applause. And at the end of his address the camera's view of him at the podium is partially blocked because the audience of local businesspeople and automotive executives was rising to give him a standing ovation.
Not quite the fanciful rendition of a Reich, but still.
To political candidates planning to speak to manufacturing executives, we say: Expect a polite, engaged audience, interested in what you have to say although not necessarily agreeing on all points. No cigars, chomped or otherwise.
CORALVILLE, Iowa, May 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The California Nurses Association (CNA) violated Iowa state law by improperly mailing promotional materials to 2,000 nurses represented by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 199 according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of nurses today. The suit charges the CNA broke the Iowa Trade Secrets Act when it sent unsolicited materials to the homes of Iowa nurses after illegally attaining a private mailing list of SEIU members earlier this year.
"It's frankly scary that an out-of-state union like the CNA would have gotten their hands on our confidential, internal list," said Cathy Glasson, a registered nurse and President of SEIU Local 199. "No one in America should ever have to worry that their private information will be taken and used without their consent."
This from a supporter of the Employee Free Card Check, which would deprive employees of their right to a secret ballot. And unions who pursue "neutrality agreements" with companies almost always demand employee addresses and other information as part of the arrangement.
"Venezuela Offered Aid to Colombian Rebels": CARACAS, Venezuela, May 14 -- High-ranking officials in Venezuela offered to help Colombian guerrillas obtain surface-to-air missiles meant to change the balance of power in their war with the Colombian government, according to internal rebel documents.
"Mr. Uribe's Send-Off": "Human Rights Watch and its congressional partners are running out of excuses for their campaign against the U.S. free-trade agreement with Colombia. The murders of "trade unionists" they decried have drastically decreased; the paramilitary leaders they claimed would go free are in U.S. custody. If their agenda is genuinely human rights -- and not opposition to free trade -- it's time for them to change course."
Yesterday, Senator Barack Obama traveled to Michigan where he announced his campaign’s manufacturing agenda . Manufacturing in America does require serious attention from the presidential candidates, and we were happy to see the Senator focus his attention on manufacturing issues. With almost 14 million manufacturing workers, the U.S. manufacturing economy alone would be the eighth largest economy in the world. However, today manufacturers face many challenges, including the increasing cost of doing business in the United States (such as rising costs in the areas of health care, government regulations, taxes, energy supplies and tort costs), a shortage of skilled workers and other factors that create disadvantages in global competition.
Senator Obama’s proposal calls for an “investment in high productivity manufacturing,” which recognizes the importance of many programs to spur innovation, such as the manufacturing extension partnership, the R&D tax credit and training-oriented programs to ensure workers have the necessary skills to compete in the global marketplace. However, the Senator’s proposal misses the point in a number of important areas. For example, his plan does not address removing barriers to trade or increasing U.S. domestic supplies of energy. And unfortunately, he does advocate policies that deprive workers of their right to a secret ballot when choosing to form a union.
Many of the proposals in this plan will put our country at a competitive disadvantage among our major international competitors. Manufacturers hope to work with Senator Obama’s campaign and all political candidates to help advance pro-growth policies that create manufacturing jobs in the United States and ensure our competitiveness in the 21st century. In an effort to aid those running for office, the NAM has recently published our member-approved Official Policy Positions, which are available online here.
Two pithy and pessimistic observations on the listing of polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
The Wall Street Journal: "The most pernicious element in the polar bear melodrama is the way the law is being run off the rails, and even a duly elected White House can't seem to throw on the brakes. If Congress wants to enact global-warming legislation, then so be it – but the costs and benefits should be argued in the open. This fly-by-night policy making is not only unscientific. It's undemocratic."
Roy Spencer, principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville: "I only hope when global warming ends, and is accepted to be a largely natural phenomenon rather than manmade, that all of the regulatory mistakes we’ve made can somehow be undone."
Senator Jim DeMint is pushing back against federally mandated collective bargaining for local firefighters and law enforcement officers as embraced in H.R. 980, which the Senate is debating this week.
“Organized labor is rapidly losing membership because the free market is helping workers more than unions. Realizing they can’t compete in a free market, organized labor is desperately trying to force more public workers to unionize.”
“Americans must have the freedom to work without being forced into paying dues to a union and they must have the freedom to vote by secret ballot in union elections. The right to work and the right to a secret ballot election are fundamental American freedoms that must not be trampled on.”
Right to Work: make it unlawful in any state to force public safety or private sector workers to pay fees to a labor union as a condition of employment. No American should be forced to pay tribute to a union in order to get or keep a job.
Secret Ballot Protection: make it unlawful to certify a union as the representative for a group of employees without a secret ballot election. No American should be forced to choose their representatives under pressure or coercion from a union or their employer.
The Vallejo City Council voted May 6 to become the largest city to ever declare bankruptcy in California. The cause of Vallejo’s demise? Contracts with fire and police unions account for 74% of the city’s $80 million budget. Why did the city sign such ridiculous contracts? Because public sector unions are a controlling force in the Democratic Party and Democrats dominate Vallejo’s government. So when it came time for the city to negotiate salaries with its unions, the Democrats were represented and the unions were represented, but the city’s taxpayers were not.
The Kaiser Family Foundation has launched a new series, "Viewpoints: The Health Care Debate," featuring interviews with leaders of organizations active in the public policy debate over health care.
The National Association of Manufacturers' John Engler provides the manufacturing perspective in his interview with the foundation's Jackie Judd. To frame the issue, he says:
The number one issue I think is they want to take care of employees who need to be protected in the event of a health emergency or if something is going on at home, that employee is going to be distracted from his or her job. Ao I think they want to be able to preserve this as a cornerstone benefit of an employment contract with someone and that means they need to be able to afford it.
A good discussion follows on health IT, health savings accounts, government programs like Medicaid and the politics of health care. A transcript is here.
Others interviewed the series, with transcripts, video and or audio are:
Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a national non-profit that advocates for affordable, high quality health care.
Ray Scheppach, executive director of the National Governors Association.
Dr. Mohammad Akhter, executive director of the National Medical Association, which represents African American physicians.
Also on the series' home page are materials about the presidential candidates' health care platforms, the daily news updates, etc. Kaisernetwork.org is a great resource we use a lot around here.
Classicist Regrets. Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann resigns rather than face impeachment for all manner of unpalatable, impolitic behavior, official and otherwise. His resignation letter, available here, claims many successes fit for an activist AG and concludes by quoting from Marc Antony's funeral oration for Caesar: "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones." To which we say, "What?" Jonathan Adler has many links here.
The Next Brutus? A year ago, The New York Times declared: "As New York attorney general, Eliot Spitzer won national attention by becoming the new sheriff in finance, taking on Wall Street and mutual funds and the insurance industry. With Mr. Spitzer now in the governor’s mansion, is there another state regulator trying to take up his badge? A strong candidate for the new Spitzer might be Marc Dann, the new attorney general of Ohio." So, who's next? Forbes had a list of other potentially headline-grabbing AGs last year.
Stars and Arguments. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing yesterday on federal regulation of medical devices, a session meant to set the stage for reversing federal pre-emption of state regulations -- such a reversal being a priority for trial lawyers wanting to sue in state courts. Testimony by Dennis Quaid -- you remember, the actor? -- got the most attention; we commend the testimony of John E. Calfee, Ph.D., of the American Enterprise Institute. You can read Calfee's conclusions here. Bottom line: Eliminating pre-emption will encourage litigation, an ineffective and expensive approach of promoting safety or advances in prescription drugs.
Preempting Balanced Reporting. For a classic example of one-side reporting, read this AP scene-setter on the preemption hearing, an article that accepts the thesis from the activists (trial lawyers and self-styled consumer groups) that the Bush administration is using regulations to lock in federal preemptions, sticking it to the little guy in the process. Five separate people are cited complaining about pre-emption, "balanced" by two people making neutral observations about the legal and political landscape. Did no one make a positive case for federal preemption?
Happy 60th, Israel -- and to Your Manufacturers, Too
May 15, 2008
As Israel marks its sixth decade of existence, we note the country has a vital manufacturing sector with a heavy high-tech leaning. The Manufacturers Association of Israel reports in its most recent economic forecast that industrial output is slowing, largely due to lagging exports. Still, the forecast of industrial growth for 2008 is 4 percent.
And speaking of high-tech:
[We] should remember that industrial growth in 2008 will be influenced by the commencement of activity of the new Intel plant in Kiryat Gat. Due to the significant amount of activity expected at this plant (at the height of its activity5 the plant's exports are expected to reach about $ 3 billion), it will bring about an increase in average production activity and exports in industry.
Judging by the comments on an Interior conference call with think tanks, the conservative, free-market types are very skeptical, if not outright hostile to the Department of Interior's listing of the polar bear as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act.
The listing of the polar bears as threatened is a compromise that shows just how the Endangered Species Act is a bad piece of legislation. The Secretary was compelled to make a listing he clearly didn't want to make and that comes with all sorts of foreseeable detrimental consequences of exactly the sort I describe in my book. In an effort to obviate those consequences, the Secretary has attempted to erect some barriers that will have all the legislative strength of tissue paper. It will take just a few seconds of a new administration to blow through them and bring about the dire consequences Sec. Kempthorne has obviously foreseen. The ESA needs to be reformed for all sorts of reasons that I discuss in the book, but this is perhaps the most urgent now.
Murray's colleague, Chris Horner, is less charitable, asking, "The only open question is how a green, might-be-around-for-some-consequences administration will deal with the litigation next year. Fight, or more flight?"
News release. Seems like one should read beyond the declaration "threatened" status to see what actual steps will be required under this 4(d) ruling. Also, Kempthorne emphasizes that the Endangered Species Act is not to be used to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
Next Steps
To make sure the ESA is not misused to regulate global climate change, Kempthorne promised the following actions:
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing a 4(d) rule that states that if an activity is permissible under the stricter standards of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, it is also permissible under the ESA with respect to the polar bear. This rule, effective immediately, will ensure the protection of the bear while allowing us to continue to develop our natural resources in the arctic region in an environmentally sound way.
Director Hall will issue guidance to staff that the best scientific data available today cannot make a causal connection between harm to listed species or their habitats and greenhouse gas emissions from a specific facility, or resource development project or government action.
The Department will issue a Solicitor’s Opinion further clarifying these points.
The Department will propose common sense modifications to the existing ESA regulatory language to prevent abuse of this listing to erect a back-door climate policy outside our normal system of political accountability.
Additionally, the Department will continue to:
monitor polar bear populations and trends,
study polar bear feeding ecology,
work cooperatively with the Alaska Nanuuq Commission and the North Slope Borough for co-management of the polar bears in Alaska,
provide technical assistance to the participants of the 1988 North Slope Borough Inuvialuit Game Council Agreement for the conservation of polar bears in the Southern Beaufort Sea region and monitor the effects of oil and gas operations in the Beaufort Sea region.
The proposed ESA special 4(d) rule is available at (http://www.doi.gov/issues/polar_bears.html) for a 60 day public comment period.
There are many more documents at Interior's homepage, which is being balky at the moment, no doubt because of traffic.
Secretary Kempthorne to Make Major Announcement
on Status of Polar Bear
WASHINGTON, D.C. – TODAY (Wednesday, May 14), at 2:30 p.m. at the Department of the Interior, Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne will make a major announcement on the status of the polar bear.
A press release and other materials will be posted on line at that time at www.doi.gov.
U.S. companies should have an easier time getting export licenses thanks to the Bush administration’s decision to accept most recommendations of a business coalition seeking a comprehensive reform of the nation’s export-control system.
The recommendations essentially have a twofold purpose: to help U.S. companies by making the export-licensing process “more efficient, predictable and transparent,” and to enhance U.S. national security, according to the coalition.
By increasing trade-distorting subsidies, the bill undermines our ability to open foreign markets to American agricultural goods. The bill creates an egregious new sugar subsidy program that will keep sugar prices high for domestic consumers, while making taxpayers subsidize a handful of sugar growers. These are just a few of the reasons why I cannot support this bill.
In the absence of a good farm bill, I call on Congress to extend current law for at least one year. The Administration’s reform-minded proposal would be preferable to current law, but in light of the bill produced by conferees an extension is now the better policy for American agriculture and American taxpayers. It is a far superior option than supporting a bill that increases farm subsidy rates, spends too much and fails to reform farm programs for the future.
A funny thing happened to the economy on its way to recession: It's taken a detour.
That, at least, is the view of a growing number of economists -- including some who not long ago were saying a recession was all but inevitable. They note that stock and credit markets have steadily improved since the Federal Reserve intervened to keep Bear Stearns Cos. from bankruptcy in early March, while a series of economic reports have been stronger than expected.
Only a month ago, a recession looked inevitable. Job cuts were picking up speed, and stock prices were falling. The Federal Reserve was cutting its benchmark interest rate rapidly, in an effort to keep the downturn from snowballing. But the notion that the economy could avoid a recession altogether seemed fanciful.
It looks less fanciful today. The economic news hasn’t exactly been sunny lately, but there also haven’t been any nasty new surprises. If anything, the economy seems to have stabilized. The pace of layoffs has eased a bit, stocks have risen and the Fed has signaled that the rate cuts are over for now.
More than 2,500 workers have been murdered by Colombian death squads for trying to form unions since the 1980s, and there have been more than 400 murders since President Uribe took office five years ago. Yet the Colombian government has done nothing to effectively stop death squads from murdering workers for trying to form unions.
CARACAS -- The surprise move by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to authorize the extradition of 14 notorious paramilitary warlords early Tuesday morning to the United States won applause from the Bush administration and was expected to raise his sky-high popularity in Colombia even higher.
But many people fear that sending the men to the United States to be tried on cocaine-trafficking charges will keep victims' families from receiving any of the promised reparations from the paramilitary leaders.
In a nationwide television address, Uribe said that he agreed to the extradition because the paramilitary leaders had been continuing their criminal activities behind bars and had failed to make restitution.
''The country has been generous with them, but the government can't tolerate a relapse into crime,'' Uribe said.
The extraditions follow the transfer of a major paramilitary warlord last week.
Illegal gangs and paramilitary groups remain a problem in the Colombian countryside, a legacy of the state's long failure to stop FARC depredations. Mr. Uribe has done more to reduce violence, from both right and left, than any president in modern Colombian history. He views the free-trade pact with the U.S. as a chance to continue that progress by connecting his country to the global economy to raise living standards. Yesterday's extradition is further proof of his efforts to see that justice is done – and of his goodwill toward the U.S.
Organized labor in the form of UNITE HERE is sponsoring a rally today featuring trade unionists from Colombia, standing in solidarity with the U.S. labor unions in opposing the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. From the news release:
WASHINGTON, May 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Colombian union leaders and workers will join Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Rep. Michael Michaud, D-Maine, Communication Workers of America president Larry Cohen, and UNITE HERE general president Bruce Raynor for a news conference on Wednesday, May 14, at 11:00 a.m. ET, to highlight their opposition to the pending Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Colombia remains the most dangerous country in the world for union members. More than 2,500 workers have been murdered by Colombian death squads for trying to form unions since the 1980s, and there have been more than 400 murders since President Uribe took office five years ago. Yet the Colombian government has done nothing to effectively stop death squads from murdering workers for trying to form unions.
This is not true. This is a conscious misstatement of fact. This is a lie.
[A] new unit under the direction of the attorney general, staffed by 13 prosecutors and 75 investigators, is now dedicated to prosecuting homicides of labor union members, focusing on 187 “priority cases” agreed to in consultation with the International Labor Office and the trade unions themselves. This unit is projected to file formal charges in 27 cases during the course of 2007 with a projected 18 convictions rendered. Colombia’s change to an accusatorial system of criminal justice procedure will further speed up prosecutions.
The Protection Program of the Ministry of the Interior and Justice provided special security protection to some 1,500 trade unionists in 2006 at a cost of about $11 million. None of the persons enrolled in this program was killed.
This summary comes from the respected and independent Center for Strategic and International Studies, which conducted a rigorous study of Colombia's progress and continued failings. You can download the full report here.
The graph from the study also refutes UNITE HERE's lie.
When deciding where to start a new business or expand operations, manufacturers and entrepreneurs weigh heavily the legal environment. They opt for states with balanced tort systems that discourage excessive litigation. In 2006, for example, job growth was 57 percent greater in the 10 states with the best tort systems than in the 10 states with the worst. That same year state-level gross domestic product grew 25 percent faster in the 10 best versus the 10 worst.
As New York attorney general, Eliot Spitzer won national attention by becoming the new sheriff in finance, taking on Wall Street and mutual funds and the insurance industry.
With Mr. Spitzer now in the governor’s mansion, is there another state regulator trying to take up his badge? A strong candidate for the new Spitzer might be Marc Dann, the new attorney general of Ohio.
Well, sort of. Guess there's more than one definition of "activist" attorney general.
Lots of back and forth today over Dann's resignation, impeachment, hanging on, etc., the result of an ugly scandal involving lots of things, including an affair with a staffer, mismanagement and interfering with an investigation.
The Senate today voted 69-29 to invoke cloture on H.R. 980, Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act of 2007, to impose collective bargaining on state and local firefighters and law-enforcement officers.
Wait... Can the federal government do that?
No, actually it can't. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out yesterday in "The Union Police," it's a violation of the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which reserves to the states those rights not specifically granted to the federal government.
This federalist principle has real-world implications, too. Do we want the federal government imposing the same workrules for firefighters in Anchorage as in Tuscaloosa as in Montpelier?
What's at play here is the multi-front effort by organized labor to maximize its political influence by controlling more and more parts of government, a base from which it can extent influence over private-sector employers. Sen. Enzi (R-WY) noted on the Senate floor today that the bill came directly from the House to the Senate floor with no hearings in the Senate Health, Education and Labor Committee. Labor must fear the scrutiny.
The Administration believes that State and local governments should determine the nature and range of collective bargaining rights exercised by the public safety workers they employ. The Administration strongly opposes this Act because its severe intrusions on State sovereignty and emergency management conflict with the fundamental principles of federalism. If H.R. 980 were presented to the President, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.
P.S. The National League of Cities opposes the bill, CQ reports.
The Heritage Foundation has just released an analysis of the economic consequences of the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade legislation, S. 2191, America's Climate Security Act of 2007. Conducted by Heritage's Center for Data Analysis, "The Economic Costs of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Change Legislation" is well presented, argued and documented.
Our analysis makes clear that S. 2191 promises extraordinary perils for the American economy. Arbitrary restrictions predicated on multiple, untested, and undeveloped technologies will lead to severe restrictions on energy use and large increases in energy costs. In addition to the direct impact on consumers' budgets, these higher energy costs will spread through the economy and inject unnecessary inefficiencies at virtually every stage of production and consumption--all of which will add yet more financial burdens that must be borne by American taxpayers.
S. 2191 extracts trillions of dollars from the millions of American energy consumers and delivers this wealth to permanently identified classes of recipients, such as tribal groups and preferred technology sectors, while largely circumventing the normal congressional appropriations process. Unbound by the periodic review of the normal budgetary process, this de facto tax-and-spend program threatens to become permanent -- independent of the goals of the legislation.
Making reasonable assumptions, the analysts conclude:
Cumulative gross domestic product (GDP) losses are at least $1.7 trillion and could reach $4.8 trillion by 2030 (in inflation-adjusted 2006 dollars).
Single-year GDP losses hit at least $155 billion and realistically could exceed $500 billion (in inflation-adjusted 2006 dollars).
Annual job losses exceed 500,000 before 2030 and could approach 1,000,000.
The annual cost of emission permits to energy users will be at least $100 billion by 2020 and could exceed $300 billion by 2030 (in inflation-adjusted 2006 dollars).
The average household will pay $467 more each year for its natural gas and electricity (in inflation-adjusted 2006 dollars). That means that the average household will spend an additional $8,870 to purchase household energy over the period 2012 through 2030.
Various groups and government bodies, working independently of one another, have examined the bill's potential consequences and reach similar conclusions: With its emission limits and injection of government control into the marketplace, Lieberman-Warner imposes dramatic economic costs. We'd say it wreaks havoc.
U.S. Senate rejects the supply side of supply and demand, defeating an amendment sponsored by Sen. Mitch McConnell that would have allowed access to domestic energy supplies in the Outer Continental Sheld and the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.
On to a measure to stop filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
It's like debating the sprinkles on a cake you can't eat.
UPDATE (12:04 p.m.): The sprinkles pass 97-1.
UPDATE (2:05 p.m.): Roll call vote here. Senate declares, "Let them eat sprinkles!"
As the three major Presidential candidates continue on the campaign trail, one similarity among them stands out: None has outlined a comprehensive plan to address the rising cost of energy. Despite significant gains in reducing our energy intensity, our economy requires additional supplies of energy. Nor has any of the major presidential candidates voiced support for increasing our energy supplies by expanding our own U.S. domestic production. A recent Barron’s article highlights that: “There are an estimated 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas under the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) that technically is recoverable. The government says 54% of that energy is in the Gulf of Mexico and 31% is off Alaska.” Recent estimates from the Department of the Interior have determined that the OCS has enough natural gas to heat 100 million homes for 60 years, and enough oil to drive 85 million cars for 35 years.
The detrimental impact of our reliance on foreign sources of energy was made even more clear with last week’s trade figures that show that more than half of our trade deficit in goods and services results from petroleum.
However, some in Congress do understand the urgency of securing domestic sources of energy. Just yesterday the NAM sent a Key Vote Letter to Congress in support of the McConnell Energy Amendment (SA 4720) to S. 2284, the Flood Insurance Reform and Modernization Act. Senator McConnell understands that expanded domestic supply of oil and natural gas will create and preserve hundreds of thousands of jobs here in the United States. Allowing access to our own vast supplies of energy in areas like ANWR and the OCS are necessary to bring down costs to manufacturers and other consumers. Addressing the need to curb rising energy costs should be something upon which we all can agree.
Chao’s most significant achievement, however, may be proactive rather than defensive: Unions now must provide a far more detailed accounting of their money and activities. In last week’s hearing, Harkin called this “going after labor unions” for making them file “onerous new financial disclosure requirements for rank-and-file members.” In reality, Chao has empowered rank-and-file members by demanding that labor leaders comply with modern standards of transparency. They must report income, expenses, salaries, and so on. It’s all online in a searchable database, too. It means that in the future, union bosses will have a harder time keeping the lid on everything from their left-wing politicking to the bar tabs they rack up at their Las Vegas conventions.
For more Shopfloor.org posts on labor reporting and the Office of Labor Management Standards, start here.
In Politico, pollster John McGlaughlin reviews the results of public opinion surveys that show a candidate's support for the Employee Free Choice Act could be damaging at the polls in the fall election. Surveys conducted of Senate races in Maine, Minnesota and Colorado find that card check's attack on secret-ballot elections in the workplace is very unpopular.
Voters intrinsically support the concept of private ballot elections. They are worried about the potential of workers being coerced and intimidated under the card-check scheme. And they see little need to change the existing balance in current labor laws to make it easier for unions to organize nonunion workplaces.
More important, they resent and oppose efforts to take away an individual’s right to a private and secret ballot. These inconvenient facts for Big Labor can be exploited to the detriment of the candidates it supports. Smart candidates will not want to be on the wrong side of this issue come Election Day.
They’ll side with voters and oppose union card-check legislation.
The Aon Corp., the risk management and consulting firm, has released an analysis of liability costs and trends in the long-term care industry, and for the first time in the nine years of reporting, liability costs are stable on a national average basis. From the news release:
The study found that average general liability and professional liability loss costs nationwide are at approximately $1,460 per bed after peaking at $2,030 per bed in 1998. This trend is driven by a reduction in the average severity of claims from a high of $261,000 in 1998 to $138,000 in 2007. In addition, the number of claims (frequency) has stabilized in recent years -- hovering around 10.6 claims per 1,000 occupied beds after rising from 6.7 claims in 1997.
"The impact of tort reform has been lasting, but it is not the only factor contributing to the stabilization of liability costs in the long term care sector," said Theresa W. Bourdon, managing director and actuary for Aon Global Risk Consulting. "Many other changes, including the withdrawal of some long term care facilities operators from expensive markets, more effective defense strategies, the use of arbitration for claims settlement and significant improvements in quality of care, have combined to help alleviate the liability crisis."
Note the clause we bolded, "the use of arbitration for claims settlement." Arbitration contracts are one important element in a broad strategy for managing and controlling liability costs, AND, they help bring more balanced compensation when claims are justified. Arbitration is a way of replacing the roulette wheel of "jackpot justice" with a disinterested evaluation of causation, damages, and legal responsibility.
All of which explains why arbitration is under attack on Capitol Hill. Rather than a single bill limiting (or effectively banning) binding arbitration, the trial bar's lobbyists are hoping to write anti-arbitration language into a wide variety of legislation. Right now they're focusing on long-term care, hoping to leverage success there into more areas of law.
In April, Sens. Mel Martinez (R-FL) and Herb Kohl (D-WI) introduced S. 2838, the Fairness in Nursing Home Arbitration Act. The bill would amend the Federal Arbitration Act to ban pre-dispute arbitration agreements for nursing homes and residential care facilities, e.g., assisted living facilities. History tells us -- as does the Aon survey -- that the result would be higher costs with no clear benefit to care.
The nursing-home industry says arbitration is relatively quick and cheap -- for the elderly plaintiffs as well as the defendants -- and lets homes concentrate their staff and budgets on caring for patients, not litigation. "It's hard to keep staff focused on doing their best when there is a threat of lawsuits constantly hanging over their heads," says Gerald Coggin, a spokesman for Tennessee-based nursing-home operator National HealthCare Corp. In Tennessee, state legislators this year introduced a bill specifically to allow the nursing-home agreements as a condition of admission, to help homes "hold down or avoid the costs of litigation," says Democratic state Rep. Randy Rinks, one of the sponsors.
The industry was alarmed in the late 1990s by a rash of huge jury awards. In one case, $83 million was awarded in the death of a Texas woman with infected bedsores; $95 million went to a California woman who fractured her hip and shoulder when she allegedly was dropped by nursing-home staff. Both awards were knocked down by the trial judges: the Texas judgment to $56 million, and the California award down to $3.6 million. But plaintiffs lawyers were newly drawn to nursing-home suits by the big awards.
And arbitration provisions minimize the likelihood of these kinds of huge payouts, which have little to do with justice. Hence the attack against binding arbitration in Congress.
Good News from the Rockies. From The Associated Press: "SALT LAKE CITY — Rocky Mountain natural-gas production is soaring as new pipelines take away the region's bounty...Utah, Wyoming and Colorado together are producing 8.2 billion cubic feet of gas a day — an increase of 1 billion cubic feet from a year ago, said Porter Bennett, president and chief executive for energy analysts Bentek Energy LLC."
Yes, We'll Buy It. We'll Have To. National Energy Board (Canada): "CALGARY, May 12 /CNW/ - Record-high oil prices fuelled a seven per cent rise in Canadian crude production last year said the National Energy Board in its Canadian Energy Overview 2007 report. The report, released today, said Canada pumped an average of 441,128 cubic metres (2.8 million barrels) of crude oil per day last year, with almost half coming from Alberta's oil sands. Oil sands investment jumped 17 per cent from 2006 to $18 billion in 2007."
Wind, But With Assumptions. Associated Press: "WASHINGTON (AP) — Two decades from now Americans could get as much electricity from windmills as from nuclear power plants, according to a government report that lays out a possible plan for wind energy growth. The report, a collaboration between the Energy Department research labs and industry, concludes wind energy could generate 20 percent of the nation's electricity by 2030, about the same share now produced by nuclear reactors."
Wind ($23.37) v. Gas (25 Cents) Wall Street Journal editorial: "Congress seems ready to spend billions on a new "Manhattan Project" for green energy, or at least the political class really, really likes talking about one. But maybe we should look at what our energy subsidy dollars are buying now...[snip]For electricity generation, the EIA concludes that solar energy is subsidized to the tune of $24.34 per megawatt hour, wind $23.37 and "clean coal" $29.81. By contrast, normal coal receives 44 cents, natural gas a mere quarter, hydroelectric about 67 cents and nuclear power $1.59."
Something Positive About 'Big Oil.'Cal Thomas column: "Peter Robertson, vice chairman of Chevron, told me it’s a myth that oil companies are not investing in new energy sources. He says last year alone, Chevron spent $20 billion exploring new sources of energy. Robertson said President Bush’s trip this week to Saudi Arabia is 'highly embarrassing' because he is “calling on the Saudis to produce more oil when we are not doing it ourselves.” The last refinery built in America was in 1976. Tighter government regulations are the main reason. That’s how unserious we are about our energy 'crisis.'"
An unusual and unfortunate development at the U.S. Supreme Court today, as four justices recused themselves in an appeal of lawsuits brought by South African nationals against U.S. companies that did business with the South African government. Three of the justices own stock in the affected companies and another has a son who works for Credit Suisse. (AP story.)
When lacking a quorum, the Supreme Court is required to affirm a lower court [2nd Circuit] ruling that went against the companies, many of them major international corporations. Both the U.S. and South African governments also urged the high court to hear the case.
The South African apartheid appeal could affect more than 50 companies sued in 11 separate lawsuits for damages claims that exceed $400 billion. Among those who signed onto the appeal are American Isuzu Motors Inc., a unit of Isuzu Motors Ltd. (ISUZY), Ford Motor Co. (F), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Honeywell International Inc. (HON), General Electric Co. (GE) and 3M Co. (MMM).
The lawsuits represent a major interference with the Executive Branch's conduct of foreign policy and open up U.S. businesses to liability claims for doing business in an entirely consistent fashion with that foreign policy.
The National Association of Manufacturers joined other business groups in an amicus brief (available here); the others are the National Foreign Trade Council, USA*Engage, U.S. Council for International Business, and the Organization for International Investment. The Solicitor General's brief is available at ScotusBlog here.
As Michael Krauss commented earliler at the Point of Law blog, "Saudi Arabia's barbaric laws mistreat women and viciously oppress non-Muslims. China enslaves millions, harvests organs from thousands it executes, and is still in denial over Tiananmen Square. Warning to all US companies doing business in those places -- did you know you might be committing an American tort? Talk about a tariff barrier to exports!"
The New York Times ran a story Saturday on conservative support for a federal media shield bill, "From Places Unexpected, Support for the Press." Cited in the story as evidence are a conservative judge, Brett Kavanaugh, Sen. John McCain and Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN). Pence is the trump card in this hand, being a leader of House conservatives.
The article notes the Bush Administration's opposition based on concerns about leaks of classified intelligence and national security information.
But yet again, a story in a major media outlet fails to refer to the serious concerns about the legislation expressed by U.S. businesses, who worry that a shield law will protect criminal acts committed against them. (Our earlier posts here and here.)
It's almost as if the reporters are lobbying for the bill.
A Puzzling Omission: I don't think it's a secret that The New York Times tends to be particularly one-sided when reporting on matters of concern to The New York Times. Given that, perhaps everyone expects that a Times story on conservative support for a federal reporter's privilege is going to be as much a work of advocacy as a work of reporting.
Still, isn't it a bit odd that Saturday's story on the reporters' privilege doesn't disclose that both of the credited authors, Eric Lichtblau and Philip Shenon, have been personally involved recently in high-profile DOJ leak investigations? Lichtblau was himself a target after he co-authored the 2005 NSA surveillance story. And Philip Shenon was one of the two reporters who had his phone records subpoened in the Valerie Plame leak investigation (the other was Judith Miller). I don't know the official standards for journalistic ethics, but it seems pretty fishy to me that Lichtblau & Shenon didn't disclose their background in the story.
WASHINGTON — A major U.S. counterdrug aid package for Mexico is under attack by U.S. organized labor, which says Congress should reject the initiative unless tough human-rights conditions are included, according to a letter revealed Friday. The opposition by the AFL-CIO and other labor groups adds another obstacle to a three-year, $1.4 billion program for Mexico known as the Merida Initiative.
U.S. organized labor is absolutely cavalier about the fights that countries like Colombia and now Mexico are fighting against terrorists and criminals and murderers. Labor's exercise of political power for power's sake means those threats grow, not just south of the border, but here in the United States, too.
An editorial in the Wall Street Journal, "The Union Police," examines a bill that would force hundreds of thousands of local policemen and firemen into collective bargaining:
A bill that passed the House last year would make the top officials at local unions the exclusive bargaining agents for public safety officers in every town or city with more than 5,000 people. They would also have the authority to bargain for everything -- pay, benefits and work rules. The goal is to give labor the whip hand with local governments, and further coerce nonunion members to join the dues-paying ranks.
Sixteen states have considered legislation like this since 1996 and voted it down. The bill, pushed hardest by the International Association of Fire Fighters, would impose it nationwide, superseding all of these state laws.
State labor relations are traditionally -- and constitutionally -- handled by the states. As the Journal notes, the safety needs of Fargo are different than those of NYC.
Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has vetoed a legislative resolution memorializing Congress to support the Employee Free Choice Act. His veto letter is here. He concludes:
"The Employee Free Choice Act is one-sided legisaltion that seeks to fundamentally alter more than 60 years of federal labor law. If passed, it will disadvantage businesses with U.S operations and may encourage more employers to transfer jobs, particularly manufacturing jobs, overseas."
Strong, principled move by the governor, especially since the resolution had no legal effect other than to encourage Congress. Organized labor has made these sorts of state and local resolutions part of its PR campaign for the anti-democratic card check legislation; it's good to see someone say, "Knock it off."
The Department of Labor today has published proposed rules for expanding the disclosure requirements for labor unions, affecting Form LM-2, which is used by unions with annual receipts of at least $250,000. From the news release:
Changes being proposed include disclosing the amount spent on benefits for individual union officers and certain union employees, reporting indirect disbursements to officers and employees, itemizing certain receipts of $5,000 or more, and disclosing the identity of the purchaser or seller in transactions involving union assets. All the proposed changes will bring further clarity to the Form LM-2 by improving disclosure in these areas. The proposed rule also increases accountability by establishing a fair procedure, including due process rights for the union, for revoking a privilege of filing a simplified annual LM-3 report instead of the more detailed LM-2.
The proposed rules were published in today's Federal Register, and you can access them here.
Among other things, the proposed rule adds a provision covering benefits paid to union officers and employees such as pensions, deferred compensation and life insurance. Currently, only gross salary, allowances, outlays for official business and assorted other disbursements to individual officers and employees exceeding $10,000 annually need to be disclosed.
Closing this loophole will enhance the ability of union members to have timely and accurate information about how union leaders and employees are being compensated. Without such information, it is difficult to assess whether the interests of members are being well-served by those representing them in the union leadership.
Both the House and the Senate convene today at 2 p.m., pro formally. The House floor schedule for the week is available here. For the full list of the upcoming week's committee hearings, goto the Daily Digest pages.
And two items of interest in state courthouses. Today in Covington, Ky., three lawyers go on trial for bilking their clients out of millions in the Fen-Phen settlement. And in Rhode Island Thursday, the state Supreme Court hears arguments on an appeal from three paint manufacturers sued by the state attorney general, twisting the public nuisance statutes to make them pay $2.4 billion for a state clean-up plan. The NAM's materials on the suit are here.
"There have been documented reports of polar bears drowning and starving -- and of snowy dens collapsing on newborn cubs and their mothers from unseasonable rains." -- NRDC fundraising letter from Lenardo DiCaprio.
The Bush Administration is under a judge's order to act on an Endangered Species Act listing for the polar bear by May 15th, as environmental groups abuse the legal system to try to enact global-warming policy through activist courts and regulations.
Well, science and population surveys indicate the polar bears aren't endangered, as AEI resident scholar Kenneth P. Green explains in The Orange County Register. Green also relates:
Environmentalists have long used charismatic megafauna as poster children in their ongoing crusade to wall off as much of the world as possible from human encroachment.
Environmental activist Eric de Place observes that using these types of animals as "poster children" for broader conservation has worked with grizzly bears, wolves, and sea otters. And the money follows the glamour.
For a particularly cynical and mawkish example of this "poster children" fundraising approach, take a look at a recent solicitation mailing from the Natural Resources Defense Council and its Polar Bear SOS campaign. (The inset photo comes from the campaign's website.)
It starts with the appeal from Leonardo DiCaprio quoted above, page 1 and page 2. Then there's a NRDC polar bear S.O.S. petition, asking, "Can you give $20 or more to throw the polar bears a lifeline?" The NRDC solicitation letter is over the top, but apparently they think that sells:
If you're like me, I'm sure it pains you deeply to imagine ...
...The last gasp of a polar bear before it drowns in the vast waters of the Arctic, unable to reach the increasingly distant ice floes it needs to find food.
...The muffled cries of newborn polar bear cubs as they are buried alive when their snowy den collapses from unseasonable rains.
...The exhaustion of a mother polar bear and her young as they succumb to starvation after enduring longer and longer periods without food.
And if that doesn't get you, we've got a tote bag!
At present, polar bear populations are robust and, according to native people, are considerably larger than they were in previous decades.[29] Predictions of polar bear endangerment are based on two sets of computer models: one set predicts how much Arctic sea ice will melt as a result of global warming, and the other predicts how polar bear populations will respond. But computer models of climate are known to be fraught with problems, and the ecological models used to predict polar bear response are equally limited.
Because of extreme limitations in data, it is essentially impossible to decide whether polar bears are endangered and whether their habitat is threatened by man-made global warming or other natural climate cycles. This is acknowledged by the experts themselves--the actual IUCN/SSC report is more broad in naming causes and more conservative about estimating their effects.
The policy implications of an ESA listing for the polar bear are breathtaking...and jobs-killing and economy-crushing and so radical that Congress, the policymaking branch of government, would never enact them. As Hugh Hewitt explains the listing would bring every carbon-emitting federal action under Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act.
Can't you hear the muffled cries of the children of laid-off employees?
Exchange rate boosts U.S. squirrel exports. From The Guardian (U.K.): "The grey squirrel, the American cousin of Britain's endangered red variety, is flying off the shelves faster than hunters can shoot them, with game butchers struggling to keep up with demand. 'We put it on the shelf and it sells. It can be a dozen squirrels a day - and they all go,' said David Simpson, the director of Kingsley Village shopping centre in Fraddon, Cornwall, whose game counter began selling grey squirrel meat two months ago."
I'll Have Another Milkshake, Please. USA Today: "Record prices are prompting oil prospectors to renew interest in drilling in Los Angeles, where urban sprawl, environmental opponents and decades of production make for one of the world's toughest oil fields."
So climate change is a good thing? The Australian: "AUSTRALIAN agricultural output will double over the next 40 years, with climate change predicted to increase, rather than hinder, the level of production...A recent spate of reports forecasting the decline of Australian agriculture because of climate change have greatly exaggerated, and even completely misreported the threat of global warming, according to senior rural industry figures."
Socialized Refinery Plans, I: Bloomberg: "May 10 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuela agreed with China, the world's fastest-growing major economy, to form a joint venture that will produce oil in Venezuela's Orinoco Belt to supply a new 400,000 barrel-a-day refinery they will build in China."
Socialized Refinery Plans, II: A Fargo (N.D.) Forum editorial, "State-run oil refinery a silly idea": "The notion that North Dakotans will benefit from a state-owned oil refinery is more about pandering than policy."
Private-Sector Refinery Plans: AFP: "KUWAIT CITY (AFP) — Four South Korean and a Japanese firm were on Sunday declared winners of four major contracts worth billions of dollars to build a new refinery in Kuwait, an oil official said...The total value of the bids made by the companies was around 8.3 billion dollars..."
Kein Fahrvergnügen. From Deutsche Welle: "German motorists expressed anger at rising fuel prices Saturday, the start of the Whitsun holiday weekend, while opposition politicians called for a cut in fuel taxes...German motorists saw the prices for a liter of petrol break through 1.50 euros ($2.30) for the first time, with diesel only marginally cheaper at 1.45 euros." That's $8.70 a gallon.
Stocking Up for the Storm.From WVEC.com, Richmond, Va.: "RICHMOND– For the period Sunday, May 25, through Saturday, May 31, Virginia will hold its first Hurricane Preparedness Sales Tax Holiday. During the weeklong event, certain purchases will be exempt from the 5 percent state and local retail sales tax. Sales tax will not be charged on generators costing $1,000 or less, or on 22 other products selling for $60 or less each."
Even bottled water? From the Tonawanda (NY) News: "North Tonawanda, NY — While shopping at the North Tonawanda Budwey’s Supermarket on Saturday, Mary Collins and her mother, Betty Collins, both had 24-packs of bottled water in their carts. Both also had differing opinions on a bill being pushed by some state officials that would add a 5-cent deposit to non-carbonated beverages — everything from juice to bottled water and half-gallons of milk. That means shoppers would pay $1.20 more up front for a 24-pack of water."
BATH, Maine - The Navy's newest guided missile destroyer was christened Saturday with the name of a fighter pilot who spent 7 1/2 years in captivity in North Vietnam, received the Medal of Honor and served as presidential candidate Ross Perot's running mate.
Four Medal of Honor recipients and seven former prisoners of war attended the ceremony at Bath Iron Works that marked a milestone in construction of the 9,200-ton ship named for Vice Adm. James Stockdale.
The Stockdale is the 56th destroyer of the Arleigh Burke class and have its home port in San Diego. The Bath Works are scheduled to build four additional Burke vessels before starting on the new DDG-1000 Zumwalt class.
More than seven in 10 [British] voters insist that they would not be willing to pay higher taxes in order to fund projects to combat climate change, according to a new poll.
The survey also reveals that most Britons believe "green" taxes on 4x4s, plastic bags and other consumer goods have been imposed to raise cash rather than change our behaviour, while two-thirds of Britons think the entire green agenda has been hijacked as a ploy to increase taxes.
They have good reason to be suspicious. The European Union has implemented a cap-and-trade system akin to the Lieberman-Warner legislation the Senate will soon consider, and the program is an expensive failure -- certainly not reducing emissions. As a report from the London-based Open Europe think-tank reports,
As the cross-party Commons Environmental Audit Committee noted: “there is little or no evidence that Phase I is leading to any cutbacks in actual emissions at all, whether in the UK or elsewhere in the EU.” In its first year of operation (2005 to 2006) emissions covered by the ETS rose 3.6% in the UK, and rose by 0.8% across the EU as a whole.
Neil O'Brien, a director with Open Europe, appears on this week's "America's Business with Mike Hambrick," explaining how cap-and-trade actually subsidized pollution in countries like China and India at a cost of billions of Euros. To hear his sgement, click here.
One of the great names of medicine is that of Dr. Charles E. Drew, a black American physician born in Washington, D.C., in 1904. He overcame walls of racial prejudice to become a doctor, and while studying at Columbia University became involved with prominent researchers working on the problem of blood storage.
Up until then, the challenge was to keep blood refrigerated until it was needed. He focused his efforts on separating and storing blood components, particularly blood plasma, in order to extend its shelf life.
During the Battle of Britain, Dr. Drew created protocols and procedures for the collection, testing and shipping of blood to England where it was desperately needed. Almost 15,000 people donated more than 5,600 gallons of blood. This experience saved countless thousands of lives during World War II.
The U.S. military went to great pains to segregate the blood of whites from blacks in those days, for no sane reason. And though Dr. Drew was the driving force behind the plasma project, he was denied the leadership role in it because of his race.
Dr. Drew was tragically killed in an auto accident in North Carolina in 1950. There were rumors he was denied medical treatment because of his race, but another black doctor traveling with him reported they received the best care available.
I’m glad he did. The reality of discrimination against that great man is embarrassing enough.
"Report: Manufacturing still strong in Alabama": Alabama has nearly 6,900 manufacturers and industrial suppliers registered - with 520 on the list for the first time, according to the latest edition of the Alabama Manufacturers Register.
In Oklahoma: "Republican legislators lashed out Friday at Gov. Brad Henry for vetoing a bill they touted as a lawsuit reform measure. ...The governor Friday vetoed House Bill 2458, which would have required an expert opinion confirming professional negligence before a civil lawsuit could be filed
"Marine manufacturers join fight for more flexibility": "The heavy hitter in the recreational marine industry — the National Marine Manufacturers Association — has stepped up to the plate in support of flexibility in rebuilding American fisheries."
From The Orange County Register: "LAKE FOREST – Authorities today confiscated more than $200,000 worth of counterfeit handbags and jewelry with high-end price tags from the home of a woman who was selling them through the Internet...Designer labels such as Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Tiffany are suspected as being sold by the woman who was asked three years ago by attorneys from some of the companies to stop selling the counterfeit merchandise, authorities said." The fakes originated in China.
From the Staten Island Advance: "A Staten Island man who may have thought that he'd get off with just a ticket when he was pulled over for turning without signaling yesterday is facing more than a minor traffic infringement after cops say they found over 500 bootleg handbags in the trunk of his car." The fakes originated in China.
From Dow Jones: "GENEVA, May 10, 2008 (Dow Jones Commodities News Select via Comtex) -- -- The World Trade Organization has drawn up a report urging China to enhance steps to protect intellectual property rights with stiffer fines and criminal penalties for offenders, a copy of the report obtained by Kyodo News showed Saturday. ...The report, titled "Trade Policy Review," was prepared for a WTO meeting that will review China's trade policies slated for May 21-23 in Geneva."
A Washington Post "Think Tank Town" column, "Fire Retardant Asbestos Suits," by John M. Wylie II, the principal author of the Manhattan Institute report on asbestos litigation.
The report shows that the long-running asbestos-lawsuit scam has destroyed 80 companies and the employees and shareholders who depend on them, and created a system so corrupt that judges and advisors were guilty of outright extortion and theft. Companies forced into bankruptcy by questionable claims are now being scammed again by attorneys double-dipping from the trusts these companies created for those who really were injured. ...[snip]
Tragically, real victims -- workers who actually face serious future health problems due to asbestos exposure -- are often duped into signing away future rights for a pittance in order to pad current attorney fees, and are then left with no recourse if they actually become sick. And workers falsely diagnosed as sick face a lifetime of worry and problems getting insurance.
This week in "Cool Stuff Being Made," we head to Quality Custom Cabinetry in New Holland, Pa., for a tour of the company's 126,000 square feet facility. Dale Leaman, director of customer service, walks us through the 16 departments, starting with an explanation of importance of just-in-time manufacturing. And, as always, attention to quality is key to success.
2006 Quality Custom Cabinetry, Inc. launched a new line of cabinetry named Saxton Cabinetry, a European frameless construction. Saxton Cabinetry went through a rigorous pilot program by several dealers. Due to the new product line, the corporate identity and overall organization was renamed to "QCCI." (Quality Custom Cabinetry, Inc).
2007 QCCI added 57,000 square feet for manufacturing and distribution to facilitate both products, Quality Custom Cabinetry and Saxton. QCCI introduced a new product collection under the Quality Custom Cabinetry brand, called Steeplechase. Steeplechase features 1 inch thick face frame construction with sophisticated styling detailing surrounding inset doors and drawers, a hallmark of Quality Custom Cabinetry.
Thanks, as per usual and with sincerity, to PCN-TV for providing the base video. Cabinetry and other woodworking is a Pennsylvania tradition, so there's history afoot.
Two of the nation's largest labor unions have struck confidential agreements with large employers that give the companies the right to designate which of their locations, and how many workers, the unions can seek to organize.
The agreements are raising questions about union transparency and workers' rights. A summary document put together by the unions says it is critical to the success of the partnership "that we honor the confidentiality and not publicly disclose the existence of these agreements." That includes not disclosing them to union members.
With their advocacy for the Employee Free Choice Act, organized labor is insisting that employees NOT be allowed to maintain confidentiality when voting on whether to join a union. The secret ballot be damned.
But when it serves their purposes, confidentiality is a matter of principle.
The particular offenders here are the SEIU and Unite Here.
“It’s got to be a help that we have had some time for the McCain campaign to get its feet on the ground. He's raising money. Getting organization behind him,” said Martinez, a McCain supporter and guest on this week’s “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick” radio program.
“But it also remains a clear fact that the Democrats are going to unite and this is going to be a battle,” Martinez said.
The Senate is weighing a climate change bill that would use a pollution cap and trade system to help prevent global warming. But Neil O’Brien from the Open Europe think-tank will tell Mike why a similar program in Europe has run into problems.
For almost 20 years the Manufacturing Extension Partnership program has given companies training to help them boost sales and cut costs. Bruce Pulkkinen from Windham Millwork Inc. in Maine, a supporter of MEP, will tell us why such a worthwhile program is under threat.
“America’s Business” will also talk to Advanced Technology Services Inc. President Jeffrey Owens. Owen’s company helps manufacturers stay on budget by maintaining and repairing their shopfloor equipment. And the program will visit with Judith Crocker, director of the Dream It. Do It. program in Northeast Ohio to find out how that program trains young people for manufacturing careers.
In our regular segments, Renee Giachino of American Justice Partnership will give us the latest on tort reform and commentator Hank Cox recalls the “The Way It Was.” And the National Association of Manufacturers President Gov. John Engler will close the program with “The Last Word.”
For more about “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick” and to listen to the program online, please click here. And for video highlights and more, check out www.americasbusiness.org.
Happy 60th Birthday, Rex Morgan, M.D! Publishers Syndicate launched the strip in 1948, bringing medical issues to the comics pages.
In the current storyline, Rex faces his toughest foe yet, TV-advertising Max the Ax, personal injury attorney, who hopes to cash in an outbreak of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Today's strip:
In other news, this month's issue of "Trial" -- the magazine of the Association for Justice -- is all about medical malpractice lawsuits.
U.S. manufacturers that offer health insurance to employees spend an average of $2.38 per worker per hour on health care, substantially more than the amount spent by foreign competitors, according to a report released on Tuesday by the New America Foundation, the Los Angeles Times reports. According to the Times, the report "provides support for the now-familiar lament of employers -- that rising health care costs are eating into the corporate bottom line."
Not the way we'd characterize it. How about: "provides support for the reality employers face, that rising health care costs make it more difficult to compete in the global marketplace." In its materials, the Foundation summarizes:
A new model for health care that...
reforms the current insurance marketplace;
provides income-based subsidies; and
is individual, rather than employer-based,
...would enable us to finance our 21st-century health system in a more sustainable and competitive way.
Again for the report and briefing paper, start here.
Some law firms continue to use mass, automated phone calls to solicit personal-injury business. Listen to the phone message here, recorded last night at home as a firm trolls for plaintiffs who suffered health troubles after heart surgery.
Saturday is Pangea Day, another opportunity for raising, fund and consciousness, by the anti-global warming movement. There are sure a lot of these new celebrations, seems like, part of some Gaea-based ritual calendar. (The more radical of Southern Hemispheric activists refer to Pangea Day as Gondwana Day. It's really caused a schism.)
CNN's Christiane Amapour is featured prominently at the Pangea Day website. Isn't she supposed to be an objective reporter? Ha, ha. Just kidding.
Speaking of consciousness-raising, The Washington Post's Jeffrey Birnbaum writes about the oil and gas industry's education/PR campaign to explain the industry more effectively, "Oil Lobby Reaches Out to Citizens Peeved at the Pump." Good story.
The American Petroleum Institute has indeed been doing a very good, fact-based job of presenting the industry to the public. We liked the ads like this one explaining who owns the industry: 29.5 percent of U.S. oil and natural gas company shares are owned by mutual funds and other firms; 27 percent are owned by pension funds; and individual investors own 23 percent. So when politicians go after the oil companies, they're also going after your pensions and IRAs.
Loved the reaction from self-styled consumer groups reported in the Post: "'It's basically deceptive advertising that dulls the natural and proper reaction of the public,' said Mark N. Cooper, research director of the Consumer Federation of America." Get the rhetoric right, Mark. The correct term is "false consciousness."
Disclosure: Your correspondent went on a blogging tour mentioned in Birnbaum's story -- the one to Corpus Christi and the Chevron platform, Blind Faith. The latest update on the $1.4 billion project is that its operation has been delayed until the second quarter. Yes, that's right: $1.4 billion. Thank goodness for profits.
Reading for this week's Park City Center for Public Policy "Defending Cyberspace" conference -- which went very well, we hear -- we encountered the phrase "Manhattan Project." It actually turns up with some frequency.
Isn't the analogy limiting, narrowing the discussion to a centralized, government-directed solution to the problems we face, one that excludes the private sector?
And the Manhattan Project was a matter of war, of national defense, one of the areas most Americans agree belongs to the federal government. Saying we need a Manhattan Project is calling X, Y, or Z the moral equivalent of war.
Latin America and the United States are joined by geography, culture and common values. For many years, the exchange of goods and services across borders has been a vital factor in maintaining a mutually beneficial relationship. The approval of the free trade agreement between the United States and Colombia would be another step toward deepening that relationship, toward fair and equitable integration of our nations, and most importantly, toward securing the stability and peace of the Western Hemisphere.
As a founding member of the Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy, the NAM has worked closely with Congress, policymakers and stakeholders in all sectors affected by IP theft to confront this serious challenge. NAM member companies believe strongly that by improving the coordination of federal government IP enforcement resources, as well as expanding authorities and improving enforcement practices at the international, federal, state and local levels, the PRO-IP Act will strengthen our manufacturing economy.
From Weather Underground. Note that of these only one has occurred since the supposed onset of man-made global warming. The latest tragic cyclone should come in at #10 or thereabouts.
Rank: Name / Areas of Largest Loss: Year: Ocean Area: Deaths:
1. Great Bhola Cyclone, Bangladesh 1970 Bay of Bengal 550,000
2. Hooghly River Cyclone, India and Bangladesh 1737 Bay of Bengal 350,000
3. Haiphong Typhoon, Vietnam 1881 West Pacific 300,000
3. Coringa, India 1839 Bay of Bengal 300,000
5. Backerganj Cyclone, Bangladesh 1584 Bay of Bengal 200,000
6. Great Backerganj Cyclone, Bangladesh 1876 Bay of Bengal 200,000
7. Chittagong, Bangladesh 1897 Bay of Bengal 175,000
8. Super Typhoon Nina, China 1975 West Pacific 171,000
9. Cyclone 02B, Bangladesh 1991 Bay of Bengal 140,000
10. Great Bombay Cyclone, India 1882 Arabian Sea 100,000
11. Hakata Bay Typhoon, Japan 1281 West Pacific 65,000
12. Calcutta, India 1864 Bay of Bengal 60,000
13. Swatlow, China 1922 West Pacific 60,000
14. Barisal, Bangladesh 1822 Bay of Bengal 50,000
15. Sunderbans coast, Bangladesh 1699 Bay of Bengal 50,000
16. Bengal Cyclone, Calcutta, India 1942 Bay of Bengal 40,000
17. Canton, China 1862 West Pacific 37,000
18. Backerganj (Barisal), Bangladesh 1767 Bay of Bengal 30,000
19. Barisal, Bangladesh 1831 Bay of Bengal 22,000
20. Great Hurricane, Lesser Antilles Islands 1780 Atlantic 22,000
One million megawatts of electricity-generating capacity powers America’s grid, but 45 percent of that infrastructure is more than 30 years old. Meanwhile, the nation has deferred investment in new, more efficient baseload plants, including new reactors.
The 2005 Energy Policy Act’s loan guarantee program is a “very small step” in the right direction, but insufficient to rebuild electric power infrastructure.
The nation and world are seeking clean-air energy sources, like nuclear, to address climate change.
Electricity demand will increase by 25 percent by 2030, according to government officials.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats on Wednesday called for a temporary special tax on oil companies’ profits and a rollback of $17 billion in oil industry tax breaks as part of an energy package. The Democrats are also seeking federal penalties on energy price gouging and a suspension of oil deliveries into the government’s emergency reserve.
Senate Republicans strongly oppose any additional oil industry taxes, which are widely viewed as unlikely to be enacted and would almost certainly prompt a veto by President Bush.
The proposed 25 percent profits tax would apply just to oil company earnings above what would be considered “reasonable” and only if those profits are not reinvested in expanding refinery capacity or renewable energy sources, according to a summary of the proposals.
"From 1980 to 1988, the WPT may have reduced domestic oil production anywhere from 1.2% to 8.0% (320 to 1,269 million barrels). Dependence on imported oil grew from between 3% and 13%."
"Reinstating the windfall profit tax would reduce recent oil industry windfalls due to high crude and petroleum prices but could have several adverse economic effects. If imposed as an excise tax, the WPT would increase marginal production costs and be expected to reduce domestic oil production and increase the level of oil imports, which today is at nearly 60% of demand."
The NAM issued a news release yesterday on competing energy measures in the Senate.
Nice featurette at U.S. News' Washington Whispers column on Ag Secretary Ed Schafer, "boyhood farmer, telecommunications exec, conservationist, Junkyard Wars runner-up, and classic car and tractor restorer ." Don't forget manufacturing executive. And governor, that, too. Meanwhile, President Bush is preparing to veto a "bloated" farm bill.
Texas tea, brewed strong. "Austin, TX (AHN) - While the rest of the nation is reeling from soaring oil prices, Texas is benefiting from the non-stop rise in prices of black gold. Oil revenues' contribution to state budget would result to a $10.7 billion budget surplus." Certainly not limited to Texas: "'I think the bulk of Montana's budget surplus comes from the oil fields of Richland and Fallon counties,' said Richland County Commissioner Mark Rehbein." That's the Bakken play at work.
While Congress stalled, stuttered and stomped: "At Vienna, the EU and Central American nations, including Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, agreed to launch free trade talks. The 27-nation bloc also agreed to similar negotiations with four Andean countries including Peru, Colombia, Bolivia and Ecuador."
Sometimes, just the thinking is flat. Henry Payne reports the reaction of airline executives to a recent Thomas Friedman column on global jetting and fossil fuels. Friedman's enthusiasm for biofuel-powered airlines is naive, they imply, and if there's one thing airline execs know, it's fuel usage. Payne: "They are extremely fuel conscious — but not because they are converts to Friedman’s religion. Fuel has always been a major business cost and so airlines are constantly investing in new planes to keep costs down. In the last eight years alone, for example — even as Delta’s fleet number has remained stable — the airline cut its fuel bill by 25 percent." Reading Friedman's columns in recent years, you sometimes think he should get out a little less.
Looks like Law & Order is actually shaping up. They've abandoned the steady beat of anti-corporate propaganda for pro-union propaganda! Yay! Last night's episode summary: "Strike -- A legal aid strike ends in the death of a lawyer, and the investigation leads to a golf pro who proclaims his innocence, again. Then the case takes an even stranger twist when Rubirosa is pitted against Cutter because of the strike that started it all." New detective actor Anthony Andrews must feel right at home, switching from Fox's short-lived "K-Ville" agitprop to "L&O" agitprop.
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada is "very close" to concluding free trade negotiations with Colombia, Trade Minister David Emerson said on Monday, calling those opposed to the deal on human rights grounds as simply "dogmatic."
Emerson also presented legislation to Parliament to enact a free trade pact with the European Free Trade Association, comprised of Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
And from Bloomberg, citing Prime Minister Stephen Harper's leadership on the issue:
Harper has made the issue a priority, saying an agreement will help improve democracy in Colombia and help President Alvaro Uribe stem violence against labor leaders.
A Canada-Colombia accord also would give Canadian farmers preferential access to the U.S.'s third largest market for wheat exports in Latin America at a time when Democrats in Congress are stalling a similar deal over concerns about violence against labor organizers in Colombia.
Colombia’s Vice-President Francisco Santos Calderón is visiting Canada this week.
Surely Congress could spend just a small percentage of its investigative energies on reviewing the crimes, economic waste and injustice perpetrated by the trial bar. Don't you think?
Sherman "Tiger" Joyce of the American Tort Reform Association cites the new study, "Trial Lawyers, Inc.: Asbestos," which details the abuses of the trial bar's shakedown/business operation, to renew his call for hearings: "“Whether one considers the findings of a federal judge in Texas who condemned lawyers and their physician accomplices for introducing phony medical records, a New York federal grand jury’s ongoing investigation into similar asbestos and silica fraud, or any of the countless related incidents reported by the media – such as the non-existent doctor who supposedly signed off on a claimant’s diagnosis in a West Virginia asbestos case against CSX Transportation – one can only conclude that Congress should spend less time worrying about problems in professional baseball and football and more time worrying about the integrity of our civil justice system."
Dan Popeo of the Washington Legal Foundation says the legal profession should do a much better job of policing itself and instilling an ethical code, and with Congress, "the silence is deafening." Still: "Unfortunately, nothing will really change until the legal establishment admits that too many other Lerachs, Scruggses and Spitzers are still out there using 'justice' and 'consumer rights' as a cover for their own aggrandizement."
More from Walter Olson at Point of Law on Trial Lawyers, Inc. He observes that the study "makes a compelling case that our legal system has failed badly to curb the various devices -- from mass screening resulting in medically dubious diagnoses, to mass forum-shopping in search of favorable courts, through group trial and mass settlement of cases -- by which some law firms convoy spurious claims of asbestos injury to victory along with the genuine." Good summary.
And more from the ABA Journal on the Manhattan Institute report. You know, the American Association for Justice, i.e., the national trial lawyers group, normally is quick to respond with an overheated news release attacking the motives of the legal reformers. Nothing so far.UPDATE: They did. The news release wasn't on the homepage, and we missed it. Same old rhetoric, though. Don't respond to the substance, just attack your opponent and change the subject. Where do they learn that? Maybe they're too busy.
The overall unemployment rate of scientists and engineers in the United States dropped from 3.2% in 2003 to 2.5% in 2006 (figure 1), according to data from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Scientists and Engineers Statistical Data System (SESTAT).[2] This is the lowest unemployment rate measured by SESTAT since the early 1990s. It continues a trend of lower unemployment rates for scientists and engineers compared with unemployment rates in the rest of the U.S. economy.[3] Comparable unemployment rates for the entire U.S. labor force in 2003 and 2006 were 6.0% and 4.7%, respectively.[4] (See "Data Comments and Availability" for the definition of scientists and engineers and other variables and for notes on SESTAT.
James Sherk at the Heritage Foundation has authored a new issue paper that rebuts the arguments of those opposed to H-1B visas. The conclusion:
Contrary to the claims of immigration opponents, H-1B workers are highly skilled workers with vitally needed skills. H-1B workers are highly educated. Almost half have an advanced degree. The median H-1B worker earns 90 percent more than the median U.S. worker. They are in no way average workers.
Good story in today's Washington Post, "Buoyed by Foreign Money," on export-driven economic growth, including a 5.5 annual rate of increased exports in the first quarter.
Locally, firms have shared in the growth, and they have a lot at stake should it tail off. Virginia's export shipments totaled $16.9 billion in 2007, up 56 percent from 2003. Meanwhile, Maryland's export shipments totaled $8.9 billion in 2007, an increase of 18 percent from the year before and 81 percent from 2003.
The story quotes the NAM's David Huether, our chief economist.
"What is happening now in the economy really shows why it is important for the U.S. economy to be engaged globally," Huether said. "When there are slowdowns in certain parts of the domestic economy, it is a real benefit when there is another pillar holding things up."
The survey partly reflects that companies are still benefiting from export growth and consumer demand that's growing as unemployment falls and real wages expand, the IW said. "Robust'' economic growth this year in the euro-region will likely deter the European Central Bank from lowering interest rates, Michael Huether, the IW's director, said in an interview. "Lower interest rates are just not on the agenda."
David Weigel, writing in the latest edition of Reason magazine, does an excellent job in describing the raw, naked, brutal and ugly politics behind organized labor's push for the Employee Free Choice Act. He starts by letting the words of Stewart Acuff, the AFL-CIO's director of organizing, illustrate:
“My brothers and sisters,” he said, “if we go into 2008 with an even larger mobilization of workers behind this legislation, with even more commitment to win the election in 2008, and put this on the agenda in 2009, I’m here to tell you today that we will pass this legislation, in the House, overwhelmingly! We will pass it in the Senate! We will defeat a Republican filibuster! And we will have a president who signs the Employee Free Choice Act! And we can get back to the business of restoring the American dream for millions and millions of workers!”
What’s the Employee Free Choice Act? If you aren’t a lobbyist in Washington, a union worker, or an employer nervously trying to prevent your staff from organizing, you might not have followed the twisty history of the latest attempt to increase private-sector unionization. “Card check,” as it is usually known, would allow employees at a company to bypass secret-ballot elections and declare their intent to unionize by simply signing cards. If adopted, it could portend the most revolutionary change to labor law since the 1940s.
One point we disagree on is Weigel's description of business lobbyists watching with a sense of "resigned horror." Not around here. We sincerely believe that once the public understands that card check means ending secret ballot elections, they'll reject it. Certainly there's no resignation among members of the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace -- including the NAM -- who are assiduously working to point out the legislation's hostility to American democratic principles.
That said, read the whole thing. An informed electorate needs more of this kind of reporting.
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Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez announced earlier this week that at 8:51 p.m. on Sunday, May 4th, the cost of unnecessary tariffs imposed on American goods entering Colombia had reached $1 billion since the Colombia trade agreement was signed. Yes, that’s billion. With a “B”.
The Department of Commerce estimates that “every single second that goes by without a vote on the Agreement costs roughly $22, and nearly $2 million every day.”
But what’s the real benefit of trade with Colombia for workers in the United States?
Try $523.18. That’s the value of U.S. manufactured goods exports to Colombia last year broken down for every manufacturing worker in the United States. That’s almost the value of the average economic stimulus check that are being mailed out this month.
UPDATE (4:06 p.m.): After kicking around this figure internally with our trade staff, we revisited this figure to develop a more accurate (and more recent) amount. Looking at annualized export figures for this year, the share per manufacturing worker of U.S. manufactured goods exports to Colombia is actually $671.61.
DAYTON, Ohio - Autoworkers and suppliers are fixing up their homes, worrying about health care coverage and frequenting food pantries as they wait for an end to the 2-month-old strike against a Michigan auto parts supplier that has idled them or cut into their business.
The UAW's strike against American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc., now in its third month, has affected about 30 GM plants.
The report represents a very good starting place for those unfamiliar with asbestos litigation, providing a readable history of the industry, the real health risks and deaths caused by asbestos exposure, and the rise of the asbestos lawsuit business model. For all its other merits, consider the report, "Asbestos Litigation 101."
Despite being debunked and punished, the practice of mass health screenings sponsored by law firms continues. These screenings -- often conducted in parking lots -- almost inevitably and unbelievably found asbestos-caused lung damage. And now? Writes Jim Copland, the Manhattan Institute's project director: "In the last six months, the Texas law firm Nix Patterson & Roach has held two mass screenings in the now-more-mass-tort-friendly neighboring state of Oklahoma. Like the asbestos screenings of old, the screenings attracted potential plaintiffs with newspaper, broadcast and direct-mail advertising."
Trial Lawyers, Inc., is resourceful. More Copland in a column in today's Examiner: "Firms began shifting lawsuits out of their formerly friendly locales and into alternative plaintiff-friendly jurisdictions; Texas asbestos law powerhouse Baron & Budd, for example, began shuffling its caseload to California...The list of target defendants, 8,400 strong, also keeps growing. None of the new targets actually made asbestos; as noted by uber-lawyer Dickie Scruggs — recently convicted for bribing a judge — asbestos litigation today is really just “the endless search for a solvent bystander.
Congress is unlikely to undertake reforms, but change is possible in the states: "Adopting medical standards of evidence can eliminate bogus claims, reforming venue rules can block lawyers from shopping their cases to lowest-common-denominator jurisdictions, repealing several liability would protect companies with minimal ties to asbestos from shouldering the load of its legal costs, and mandating transparency can ensure that asbestos claimants are not double-dipping among the bankruptcy trusts in multiple jurisdictions."
The injustice inflicted by Trial Lawyers, Inc., is manifold. Companies that had only a passing involvement with asbestos are brought to their knees by litigation, courts are swamped by abusive lawsuits, and the real sufferers are cheated.
But as Copland concludes, "One thing’s certain: Absent reform, asbestos litigation abuse is here to stay."
“And as we’re talking today, Terry, the death count in Myanmar from the cyclone that hit there yesterday has been rising from 15,000 to way on up there to much higher numbers now being speculated,” Gore said. “And last year a catastrophic storm from last fall hit Bangladesh. The year before, the strongest cyclone in more than 50 years hit China – and we’re seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.”
So was the cyclone in China 50 years ago also caused by global warming?
Burma's annual population growth is 0.8 percent. Over the past three decades, its population has about doubled, to more than 47 million today. We contend that a correlation exists between high fatalities and increased population density in low-lying areas.
Trial lawyers in the state and a group proposing to severely restrict the ability of plaintiffs to bring contingency fee civil lawsuits have agreed to withdraw competing ballot issues aimed for the November ballot.
John Sadwith, executive director of the Colorado Trial Lawyer's Association (CTLA) said the decision was made late Tuesday after continuing talks with the group promoting the restrictions on how much lawyers could collect in successful civil actions.
"We didn't think it was the best interests of working people in the state" to go forward with gathering signatures and putting the measures on the November ballot, Sadwith said.
Oh, for the working people, is it? We have another theory: National political and legal figures called Sadwith, saying, "Are you nuts? With the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August, the national media will be all over this story, confirming the public's prejudices against trial lawyers as greeding, grasping, avaricious and vengeful characters. Our critics among all those doctors, real estate agents, business owners, homebuilders, farmers, everybody...they'll have a heyday. It's a public relations nightmare. KNOCK IT OFF!"
The lawyers' nine initiated measures would have, among other things, capped compensation by CEOs -- unconstitutional -- revoked licenses of some doctors sued for malpractice, limited commissions for real estate agents, gone after homebuilders and tapped federal farm subsidies of certain farmers. No working people among those groups.
High global commodity prices are hitting manufacturers hard these days, as growing global economies (China, India) push demand. It's good news for mining and heavy equipment companies, though, prompting many U.S.-based companies to plan for expanded mining production. As this story from Marquette, Mich., reaffirms, environmentalists are opposed. No, really.
Here's a riddle: How do you discover water on Mars? Submit a permit application for a Martian mine and the environmental groups will be sure to detect threatened wetlands.
But it takes the penny to really focus the public (i.e., media's) attention on commodity prices. Front page story across the land today: "Congress looking at steel pennies and nickels" "Surging prices for copper, zinc and nickel have Congress trying to bring back the steel-made pennies of World War II, and maybe using steel for nickels, as well."
Meanwhile, the effort continues to prevent any renaissance of the U.S. nuclear power industry, starting with demanding impossible standards of uranium mining. In Colorado, " Opponents of uranium mining on Tallahassee Pass today hailed new rules that would govern uranium mining in Colorado if signed by Gov. Bill Ritter. ...House Bill 1161 would require uranium mining companies to clean groundwater at their sites to pre-mining quality after mining the radioactive material."
Let's demand that standard of all things, including parents. You may have a baby if you promise to restore the world to pre-baby quality afterward. We'll accept a $100,000 bond.
From Reuters, a story anticipating a meeting in NYC Thursday between U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab and India Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath, with Doha high on the agenda. India is resisting demands made by the U.S. and EU that advanced developing countries open their markets to more foreign manufactured goods.
Speaking in advance of the India talks, Frank Vargo, vice president for international economic affairs at the National Association of Manufacturers, criticized New Delhi, saying: "They talk the talk, but they don't walk the walk."
"In other words, they say good things, that they want this to work ... but when it comes to actually putting any positive proposals on the table, they don't," Vargo said.
Honestly, as I scanned the news hits this morning, the following headlines were listed one after another. Good lord, does anybody see a correlation here?
Let me see, workers are striking, jobs are moving to Germany, manufacturers’ expectations are falling and the price of oil is at an all time high.
What should we do?
Apparently, some in Congress think that this would be a good time to increase regulations and stop companies for looking for more oil. Does this seem odd to anybody else?
Last week, I spoke to a group of UAW workers here at the NAM. Surprising, it was an easy speech because we agreed on a lot. We were all feeling the same pinch. We’re dealing with higher prices at the grocery store and at the pump. We’re worried about sending our kids to college and the future of our country. Although we didn’t agree on all of the solutions to these problems, none of us suggested more regs and less oil supply.
Patty Long is the Vice President for Policy Research and Member Communications and the newest member of the NAM blogging team. She is also the mother of 4 teenage girls and like the rest of America, she worries about gas prices, grocery bills and college tuition.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Alaska Native and environmental groups sued Monday to stop exploration by oil companies this summer in Arctic waters frequented by whales, seals and other marine species.
The groups are challenging federal permits that allow Shell Oil Co. and BP PLC to search for oil and gas using powerful acoustic devices that have been shown, at times, to harm a variety of marine animals. The technology, known as seismic exploration, is used to determine the geologic makeup of the sea bed.
"The federal government is rushing to approve a burst of new seismic activity without completely studying the effects on marine life," said attorney Clayton Jernigan of Earthjustice. The Juneau-based law firm filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Anchorage.
The oil companies have been cast as villains during the recent presidential campaigns for supposedly profiting too much and causing high gas prices. It's a cynical play designed to take advantage of public anger of high gas prices.
Might we respectfully suggest to the candidates that they look to other sources of the problem(s), such as environmental groups that prevent access to domestic energy supplies, the "energy insecurity" crowd.
How brave, how politically defining it would be for a candidate to repudiate one or more of the environmental groups who restrict demand and make the United States more dependent on foreign oil. Tell these obstensible supporters how much damage they're causing.
San Francisco's groundbreaking program to provide health care to all 73,000 uninsured city residents received a major lift this week as more than 700 businesses in the city signed up for the plan.
The businesses represent 12,900 employees, more than half of whom are eligible for the Healthy San Francisco program, which currently enrolls 19,000 people. The other employees are eligible for a health-care reimbursement account.
Major boost! Guess the critics were wrong, right? Except....
The program is expected to cost about $200 million a year, with a portion of that paid by employers who join. So far, businesses have contributed about $6 million to the program, according to the Department of Public Health.
Well, they're 3 percent of the way! (If that $200 million figure isn't a low-ball figure.)
The Pacific Research Institute's John Graham comments, "And, did I mention that San Francisco, like California, has a big bomb of a budget deficit before taking SFHAP into account?"
The NAM has filed an amicus brief in the lawsuit brought by the Golden Gate Restaurant Association against the city plan, which violates ERISA, the federal law that supersedes state and local regulation of employee-provided health care.
Utility as in electric utility, not software application.
In any case, congratulations and kudos to PG&E for being the first major utility -- that we know of -- to launch a blog, Next100, http://www.next100.com/
The San Francisco-based site describes itself as "a dialogue on the next century of energy," and includes posts and links on clean energy, green energy, carbon dioxide, China's emissions. It's a new site, so more to come, and it IS a dialogue, since there's a comments section.
California is a very tough business environment generally, and policymakers at every level in the state make life very difficult for energy producers to meet the market's demand. It makes sense to have a website devoted to public outreach on the issues, so good for PG&E.
As of last Friday, 127 proposed initiatives have been filed with the Colorado Secretary of State's office. Long ballot, eh? The Colorado Trial Lawyers Association has been extra active, filing nine new ballot initiatives for the November election. State Rep. Jerry Sonnenberg comments in the Greeley Tribune.
Farmers are one of their targets and for the life of me, why lawyers hate farmers and rural Colorado is beyond me. Their ballot initiative, if passed, would force farmers to give up as much as 25 percent of any disaster payment or farm program to higher education for farmer training and outreach.
They filed another initiative that says specifically what Realtors can charge per sale.
The lawyers also filed to order the maximum amount a company can pay its executives.
In an apparent retaliation for an earlier filing to limit attorney fees, the head of the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association has filed with the state to put nine measures on the November ballot.
"For too long, corporate interests have been put ahead of consumer interests in this state," said John Sadwith, executive director of the 1,200-member trial lawyers' group. "Real people in this state deserve a break."
Realtors, farmers, doctors, executives -- You're not real people. So go away, and take the economy with you.
Is it the exchange rate? "Volkswagen of America will pay more than $14 million over five years to be D.C. United's primary sponsor and have its logo appear on the team's uniform, sources familiar with the negotiations said yesterday." D.C. United is the professional soccer team in town. VW sponsors Vfl Wolfsburg in Germany, which finished with 12 wins, 10 losses and 9 draws last season in the Bundesliga.
Washington, D.C., lobbied hard to get its own commemorative quarter -- after the 50 states -- and the three final designs are now being voted on: Duke Ellington, Benjamin Banneker, and Frederick Douglas. We'd go with Banneker, a mathematician, astronomer and surveyor. Coins have the power to excite children's imaginations, so a Banneker design might encourage a future engineer or manufacturer. Then again, he WAS from Baltimore. (Our real preference: Henry Adams and the Willard.)
And in the mother country, from Reuters: "LONDON, May 6 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown has lost the "confidence and trust" of British business in less than a year in office, according to the head of a leading manufacturers group. Brown also risks sparking an "exodus" of British companies to more favourable tax regimes like Ireland, said Martin Temple, chairman of the EEF manufacturers trade body."
Broad shoulders or deep pockets? From The Heartland Institute: "Sales taxes in the Chicago area could climb $1 billion this year, making Chicago the most expensive city in the United States in which to shop and dine...The tax hikes have been imposed by the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA), which includes Cook County and five suburban counties, and by the Cook County Board. They come on top of other major tax hikes, including a record $86 million property tax hike and 40 percent real estate transfer tax hike in Chicago, and the imposition of the nation's first tax on bottled water, also in Chicago..."The government unions are controlling the whole process. Hire more people, increase pensions, raise salaries. That's all they want, and they get it," said Jerry Roper, president of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce.
Indiana's manufacturing and logistics industries are growing, according to a report released today by Ball State University.
The first "Indiana Manufacturing & Logistics Report Card" is an initiative focused on the state's manufacturing and logistics economy. The report card shows Indiana leading its neighboring states in key measures like productivity, capital investment per worker and business costs.
The report card was created by Ball State University's Bureau of Business Research, with a team of economists and researchers led by Michael Hicks.
Overall, the report indicated that manufacturing is growing in Indiana and nationally. Last year was a record year for U.S. manufacturing in terms of industrial output, according to the report. Hoosier manufacturers lead neighboring states in capital investment per worker and industrial research and development.
I’ve just come from this meeting they have once a year. I do get letters and e-mails and things from neighboring states that remark on this contrast, and so forth, so anyway. On the subject of trade, Susan Schwab was one of the presenters and gave a very good presentation, pointed out among other things that since NAFTA, manufacturing output in America has more than doubled. So among her messages was, whatever problems you may be experiencing don’t have anything to do with NAFTA.
But the governor of Michigan took exception to that, and in what I thought not very persuasive terms, attempted to lay the problems of her state on that. I didn’t say anything…there’s no point in that place, or any place, I guess, to have an argument about it. But there’s nothing about Michigan that doesn’t apply to Indiana, too. And yet we have made economic progress. It leads you to think that there are other things, other variables involved, like tax, and costs and regulatory policy and so forth.
John Derbyshire at the National Review's The Corner blog wanted more information about the Bakken Formation, the oil-rich strata underneath the Upper Great Plains we've been blogging about here. Derb was kind enough to mention several responses, including Shopfloor.org's posts, and then later linked to this report at The Oil Drum, a thorough discussion of the formation's potential by Piccolo, a petroeum engineer. Piccolo is not as optimistic as the USGS as to the total recoverable oil, noting the formation may have already reached peak production.
Very good review, although we anxiously await an analysis from Contrabassoon.
UPDATE (9:10 a.m. Tuesday): Much, much more at Next Big Future, including well-by-well production figures.
The three-to-four billion barrel Bakken play in North Dakota is certainly gaining attention...and prompting some big plans. From Tom Dennis, Grand Forks Herald:
North Dakota’s fate now is tied to the price of oil, in a way that’s likely to influence our state and federal elected officials for years or even decades to come.
While North Dakota’s “original oil in place” figure exceeds the UAE’s currently recoverable reserves, Dubai is a Las Vegas-like showpiece today because the oil there is so much easier to get at. Many Persian Gulf reserves are so accessible that oil companies can profit even when oil sells for a few dollars a barrel. So, the oil flowed decades ago when the price was exactly that, and it has flowed steadily ever since.
Shoots holes in the Buffalo Commons theory, doesn't it? That's the theory promulgated back in the '80s by Frank and Deborah Popper of Rutgers, arguing that Great Plains were oversettled in a terrible historic mistake and that natural and economic forces would eventually lead to their depopulation. Best to rationalize the process and have an enlightened federal policy to create an American Serengeti, the Buffalo Commons, they argued.
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) argues for passage of a federal media shield law in today's Washington Post, challenging a recent column by Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who contends a shield law would place reporters above the law. Last week, Politico carried a thorough update on the pending legislation in the Senate, S. 2035. The White House is resisting the legislation, arguing that it may protect bogus journalists and Internet provocateurs who disseminate national security and intelligence secrets.
Yet in Senator Specter's column, the op-ed by Mukasey, and Politico's story, no mention is made of business' troubles with the legislation. The issues being examined all deal with national security and classified intelligence.
Business observers are seriously concerned that the media shield will free from accountability disgruntled employees, unethical attorneys, criminals and others who will be able to steal or otherwise illicitly acquire important, confidential data, release it to a "journalist" -- whatever the definition -- and do great damage without any public interest being served (beyond satisfying idle curiousity).
Consider this post-media-shield scenario: A popular blogger with mainstream media experience has declared a campaign against Company X for what he views as its record of pillaging the environment. Developing an obsession, the blogger decides to burglarize the CFO's home when the family is away for the weekend, breaking into the personal safe and stealing the CFO's laptop. What a wealth of intriguing, damaging information: Employee records, including Social Security numbers, trade secrets, competitive information and financial numbers, even computer passwords.
To punish the company, the blogger posts all this data on his website, causing terrible financial damage not just to the company but to scores of employees. All in the public's interest, supposedly.
It's great to have pride in our heritage and in America, there is such diversity of origins that a rich tradition in many communities is a celebration of their founders and the culture they brought with them.
Dutch settlers in America are a part of this wonderful American tradition. We all pretty much know from high school history that the Dutch had one of the world's most valuable pieces of real estate--now known as Manhattan--but lost it to the English. Some may have heard about the Dutch tradition in Holland, Michigan where many settlers from the Netherlands went to live. But how many of you knew that Pella, Iowa has a legacy of Dutch settlers that is celebrated every year at this time, when the tulips bloom?
The accompanying picture is from the tulip festival in Pella, Iowa and shows in the background the Tulip Toren, or Tulip Gate. Mary Vermeer Andringa, a native of Pella and the chief executive officer at Vermeer Corporation there, told me about this festival a few days ago. Her family has Dutch roots as you might have guessed with names like Vermeer and Andringa. Mary's family and friends were in town to see the parades, enjoy the children's programs, concerts, auto shows and of course the tulips. I understand there are 30,000 tulips in Pella. Vermeer Corporation -- manufacturer of a wide range of industrial equipment -- alone plants 12,000 tulips on their own corporate campus. The tulip is one of the most beautiful flowers of the year, not least because it blooms early when we need some cheer after the long, grey winter. Some day I've got to make it to Pella at this time of the year to take in this floral spendor.
For more images of Pella, Iowa's tulip festival just click here and get ready for their 2009 festival from May 7-9. And kudos to the Vermeer Corporation for helping to make their town special with support for this festival and their own magnificent plantings.
Happy Battle of Pueblo Day. And you Hoosiers, be prepared to show your ID on Tuesday; it's primary day (in North Carolina, too.)
The Senate does not meet today -- salud! -- convening Tuesday to resume debate on H.R. 2881, FAA Reauthorization Act, and S. 2284, Flood Insurance Reform and Modernization Act.
The House convenes today at 12:30 p.m., and senses will be expressed. On Tuesday, look for debate on the appointment of conferees on H.R. 4040, the Consumer Product Safety Modernization Act. The Farm Bill conference report might also make it to the floor, as might H.R. 5818, the Neighborhood Stabilization Act.
While the media has been rightly focused on first quarter GDP and April employment numbers, which showed that the economy grew by a modest 0.6 percent in Q1 while overall employment edged down in April for a fourth consecutive month, the Commerce Department released a separate report last Tuesday on GDP by Industry for 2007 that you might find interesting.
According to the report, which breaks down the economy (GDP) by contributions by industry (as opposed to the typical Consumption+Investment+Government+Trade), the GDP grew by 2.2 percent in real terms on an annual basis last year. The manufacturing sector edged out the overall economy and grew a slightly faster 2.3 percent in 2007.
Here are some highlights of the report.
Manufacturing accounted for 11.7 percent of GDP last year, the same share as 2006 and virtually the same as the 11.9 percent in 2005.
Six of the 15 major industrial sectors, accounting for roughly a third (36 percent) of the overall economy grew faster than manufacturing last year. The Information sector (4.7 percent of GDP) grew the fastest, advancing 9 percent in 2007. The only individual sector larger than manufacturing which also grew faster than manufacturing was Professional Services, which at 12.2 percent of the economy grew by 4.6 percent last year.
8 sectors, accounting for roughly half (52 percent) of GDP grew slower than GDP. Not surprisingly, the only sector where there was an outright decline was construction. Following a 6 percent decline in 2006, construction GDP, which accounts for 4 percent of the overall economy, fell by 12.1 percent last year. This is the biggest yearly decline going back to 1988.
Over the course of the current expansion, the manufacturing sector has grown in tandem with the overall economy. From 2001 to 2007, manufacturing GDP has risen by 16.7 percent, nearly identical to the 16.9 percent rise in overall GDP.
During the ongoing presidential campaigns, the issue of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) has repeatedly come up. Some have claimed that NAFTA has been bad for the U.S. economy and has contributed to the deindustrialization of America.
Well, with the latest data now available, here is what the facts show. In the 14 years since NAFTA went into effect, the U.S. economy has grown by 54 percent, which is 17 percent more than the 46 percent rise in GDP during the 14 years prior to NAFTA. At the same time, the manufacturing sector increased by 61 percent between 1993 and 2007, which is nearly 80 percent faster than the 34 percent rise in manufacturing GDP during the 14 years prior to NAFTA's implementation (1979-1993).
So here is what I would do. We've talked about this, we've never gotten it done -- certainly under the Republicans, they were not about to -- we need to change the tax code to take out any single benefit from your tax dollars that goes to any business that exports a job out of Indiana to any foreign country. It's outrageous. It's unpatriotic that is still going on. And you look at the tax code -- it makes sense. We are, you know, a free country. If people want to start jobs somewhere else, we're not going to stop them. But why should we help them? Why should we tell them, if you move those jobs and you make profits over there, you don't have to pay taxes on them, unless you bring the money back home? Well, hey, why would you ever bring the money back home?
Repatriation of Foreign Earnings: In general, U.S. companies pay a 35 percent “toll charge” when they bring foreign earnings back to the United States. A temporary “tax holiday” enacted in 2004, which gave companies the opportunity to reinvest foreign earnings in the United States at an effective 5.25 percent tax rate, brought back some $300 billion to the United States and generated some $17 billion in tax revenues. Reinstating this provision would provide additional funds for much needed investment and job creation.
Granted, it's an advocacy piece; conservative Christian groups like Focus in the Family want more transparency in state judicial elections because they believe it benefits candidates who are rule-of-law judges (as opposed to liberal activists). State business groups tend to agree.
The report brings more info to bear on a national issue being played out in the states than we've encountered anywhere else. Did you know that the James Madison Center has organized the Judicial Accountability Project to end laws and rules that prevent judges from answering questionnaires? Legal efforts are under way in eight states.
As John Stamberger of the Florida Family Policy Council says: "All judges have views. The only question is [whether] they express those views when they write a decision, when they do a dissent, or when they rule from the bench. The question is, does it serve the interest of a robust democracy for us to know those views before they’re elected or learn those views after they’re elected. "
The soundfile linked above is the full 5:30 interview broadcast this weekend. A shorter version was broadcast on April 28th; here's the transcript.
Florida's trial-lawyer association is traditionally opposed to any limits on people's right to sue. It is a potent interest group in Tallahassee; its political committee contributed more than $3.5 million to state candidates in the past three years. And it has particularly strong support in the Senate.
But though the trial lawyers had said early this year they had a "problem" with the liability language, Central Florida backers didn't recognize until too late how hard the group was willing to fight.
"No one realized that the trial lawyers had decided to take this on and make it their power play," said Fred Leonhardt, a lobbyist for Orlando.
Nobody crosses an ILWU picket line, not unless he wants to pick his teeth up off the floor or find his car on fire. Admittedly, some will call this “intimidation”; the Longshoremen prefer to think of it as “solidarity.”
For another perspective, try Lowell Ponte, a former Readers' Digest editor who now writes for NewsMax, pretty hardcore in its own right, right.
It cost our economy between $1 and $2 billion, equivalent to the theft of up to $26.66 from every American family of four -- money you and your family will be paying in higher prices.
Even more troubling is that those who conspired to assault us have not been arrested, jailed, or even removed from their high-security-risk positions.
The two writers, both historically attuned, take a different view of one of the union's founders, Harry Bridges.
If there is one trend that stands out in case studies of successful CEOs, it is that most of them spend time in blind alleys before they get to the executive suite.
Michael Ruettgers is a typical example. An indifferent student at the University of California, he spent most of his time at the beach or playing bridge. Cal sent him packing.
He got the message. He finally got a college degree and went on to Harvard Business School.
Fast forward to the late ‘80s. Ruettgers is executive vice president of EMC, a computer storage company that was on the ropes. The company was trying to stay afloat after shipping faulty products to customers.
Ruettgers met the challenge head on. The company guaranteed replacements even if the product was working just fine. It was a near run thing. The company, which was doing $123 million in sales, went through all but about $3 million of its bank loans to stay in business.
Ruettgers earned a reputation as a tough, aggressive competitor. By the mid-1990s, EMC had knocked of IBM as the number one provider of high end storage.
He made bets on new markets and acquisitions throughout that time. Ignoring doubters, he pushed storage boxes into non-mainframe servers, connecting to different types of servers. Soon that market made up more than half of EMC sales. Today, EMC’s market capitalization is more than $30 billion.
A month or two ago, the "world hunger crisis" burst upon the scene, suddenly seizing the media high ground and dropping horror stories and analyses down on the unsuspecting public. A remarkable example of a herd mentality marrying up with pack journalism running with the boys on the bus....oh, and ethanol's to blame.
Not to say there's no connection between ethanol and food prices -- in fact, it's been argued for years -- but the explosion of coverage raises suspicions. It's as if editors who have long disliked government subsidies for ethanol found a new angle that more effectively made the case against this particular renewable fuel.
Alternative theory: Environmentalists who had for decades promoted alternative fuels turned to their global master plan, Page 472, the chapter entitled, "The Promoting Phase is Over. Time to Pull the Rug Out on Ethanol." Because no energy is always preferable.
The Post article asserts that corn prices have “been climbing for months on the back of booming government-subsidized ethanol programs.” This has quickly become the conventional wisdom. But while free market types (like me) are skeptical about both subsidies and tariffs, there is actually no evidence that these market manipulations have been a major factor behind rising prices for corn or other grains. Researchers Robert Zubrin and Gal Luft point out that the total U.S. corn crop has increased 45% since 2002. The amount of corn available for food and feed has increased 34 percent --- after the part used for ethanol has been taken out.
But haven’t those farmers cut back on other crops -- soy and wheat, for example -- to plant more corn and hasn’t that led to increases in the prices of those grains? Apparently not. As Zubrin and Luft also note, U.S. soy plantings this year are expected to be up 18%, wheat plantings 6%, and overall, U.S farm exports are up 23%.
Well, then, it's global warming!
The Post article also blames higher prices on global warming. But there is no solid evidence to suggest that whatever global climate change we have experienced in recent years – an increase of 0.31 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since the mid-1970s is the best current estimate -- has reduced food production. In fact, a warmer climate should mean a longer growing season allowing for more food production.
At any rate, there's an odd media/economic/public relations/activist/media dynamic going on here, a dynamic that historically translates into political pressure and impetuous policymaking. Be on guard.
*May is a supporter of federal mandates that would encourage development and use of flex-fuel vehicles. So he's not an anti-ethanol guy, by any means.
UPDATE (3:10 p.m.): Over at Planet Gore, Henry Payne rebuts what he takes to be May's ethanol touting, arguing for a close connection between ethanol as fuel as world food prices. Our post was more about the sudden shift among the public-opinion influencers, which, as said, engenders suspicions.
Today's Washington Times has the best single take we've seen on the energy doublethink on display in Maryland, where Governor O'Malley has blocked construction of new wind turbines on state lands while at the same time demanding dramatic increases in renewable energy. From "Wind power debate whips up controversy":
ANNAPOLIS — Self-styled "green" leaders across the country face a conundrum over wind power: Do they alienate part of their constituency by leveling pristine forests to build wind farms, or irritate the other part by rejecting a promising source of renewable energy?
When Gov. Martin O'Malley faced that choice in April , he opted for the latter, and in no uncertain terms.
"In the end, we could not justify the consequences that commercial wind would have on this land, this publicly held land," he said in announcing his decision to block a wind-farm proposal in Western Maryland. He also barred wind turbines from being constructed on any state land.
"I also want to stress what this decision should not be misinterpreted to mean: This is not a rejection of wind power in the state of Maryland," he told a group of wind- farm opponents.
No?
Another question, less rhetorical: "Pristine" forests? That's the term the anti-wind forces used to block the turbines in Western Maryland, one echoed by the Washington Times' reporter. Pristine means untouched, uncorrupted, unsullied by man. In Western Maryland. Perhaps the more accurate term would be, ""really pretty."
Congressman Bart Gordon (D-TN) helped push passage of legislation that will create an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy. That agency will harness some of the best minds in America to help the nation develop solar, nuclear and other alternative energy, Gordon says.
From 
One of the toughest guys in the history of American industry was Henry Clay Frick who was a partner of Andrew Carnegie in building the domestic steel industry. Like Carnegie, Frick was a little guy, born to grinding poverty who worked his way to the top with sagacity and fierce determination.
National Association of Manufacturers President John Engler is headed to U.S. energy hot post today to speak to the
Remember how former Labor Secretary Robert Reich misrepresented a meeting he had at the National Association of Manufacturers, describing it as a room full of cigar-chomping industrialists who hissed him loudly?
Well, science and population surveys indicate the polar bears aren't endangered, as AEI resident scholar Kenneth P. Green explains in 
It's great to have pride in our heritage and in America, there is such diversity of origins that a rich tradition in many communities is a celebration of their founders and the culture they brought with them.
From the Lewiston Tribune, reprinted